


Ain't no Sunshine

by sadiequinn86



Series: It's just a little Bughead crush [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alice Cooper is a terrible mom, Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Betty Cooper Deserves Better, Betty Cooper Needs a Hug, College, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Falling In Love, Forbidden Love, Friendship, Full dark no stars, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jughead has layers, Love, Minor Character Death, Protective Jughead Jones, Southside Serpent Jughead Jones, Sweet Pea is mean, protective! Jughead, southside, southside serpents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-10-30 23:23:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 65,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17837996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadiequinn86/pseuds/sadiequinn86
Summary: For every part of Jughead Jones that's sweet, there's a much bigger part that's dangerous. Even worse, his gang of Southside Serpents are ruthless and they're terrifying.Betty knows she should stay far away from them, and far away from Jughead too. But he's her best friend's older brother and when Betty ends up broke and in trouble she turns to him for help. Suddenly she finds herself drawn to the Serpent Prince like a moth to a very forbidden flame, and Betty has a sneaking suspicion he's going to take her apart piece by piece then hold her tightly as she burns in his fiery embrace."Oh please, Betts," Jellybean laughs. "This isn't some cheesy Netflix Original teen rom com. I'm not going to ask you to choose between your best friend and your crush. If you like my brother please just put us all out of our misery and do something about it."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> First of all - some amazing soul in the universe has nominated my fic 'The Blonde in the Window' for a Bughead Fanfiction award. It made me very happy and very emotional and meant so much to me so THANK YOU to whoever that was. 
> 
> Second of all - I've finally figured out how to work Tumblr. Possibly. Maybe. I think. My username is sadie-quinn. Come find me! Teach me what I'm supposed to be doing over there on that site! Show me where the cool kids hang out! 
> 
> Third of all - I'm sorry I'm starting another new fic and not finishing my current WIP. Yes I'm very bad but this fic literally just tumbled out of my head and I wrote 20 thousand words before realizing I should probably just start posting it up. When I dreamt it up it was light-hearted and comedic but when I actually started typing what ended up on the page was very dark, angsty and depressing. 
> 
> I'm finding it very interesting to write (despite being very different to my last fic) so I hope you enjoy. The chapters are super long and I'm editing the second one now so it's not too far behind this one. I'll try to post it up tomorrow.

When the moving truck appears at the house next door, Betty Cooper is in her front yard playing hide and seek. She is concealed in the thick foliage of her mother's hedge and trying not to giggle as Polly stumbles around the vicinity in careful search of her.

Her best friend Archie Andrews has climbed the tree at the end of her front path. She can see his scuffed blue sneakers dangling down from a branch, and she wants to call up to him that Polly will surely spot him, but she selfishly stays quiet to keep her own location hidden.

But when the truck arrives, followed quickly by a car, the game is abandoned and the children all come together to peer silently in awe across the side fence.

Two dark haired parents, and two dark haired children exit the vehicle.

The older child (a boy) who is perhaps Polly's age or maybe even older, scowls and disappears inside the front door with his parents. But the little girl comes happily skipping over to them to introduce herself.

She says her name is Jellybean. Archie doesn't believe her, because jellybean isn't a name - it's a candy. But Betty reaches across the fence with her right hand extended and Jellybean shifts her raggedy teddy bear to her other side so that she can meet Betty's open palm with her left hand.

And in that handshake, a friendship is firmly established.

Jellybean is five years old, and she tells Betty that her brother (Jughead - another peculiar name that Betty chooses not to comment on) is ten. Betty thinks it's quite a serendipitous discovery that she, at seven and a half years old, exactly cuts the age difference between the two siblings. Nobody else seems quite as impressed, so she keeps a lid on her enthusiasm.

Archie is seven years old, same as Betty, and also her neighbor. Betty is thrilled at the idea of having friends live directly on either side of her house. It'll be like having an Elm Street friendship collective.

She doesn't have a lot of friends at school, because the other children tease her for being a snobby little teacher's pet. They don't quite seem to understand that she's shy, rather than snobby. And she can't help that she's smarter than the rest of them combined. She's already given up trying to impress them.

Archie huffs that he isn't interested in playing with girls (Betty wants to point out that he was actually _just_ playing a game of hide and seek with two girls, but she cherishes him like a brother so she lets the moment pass) and he heads back to his home to play video games.

Polly is nine years old and decides she's too old to be hanging around "babies" like Jellybean, so she goes back inside to help her mother prepare cupcakes for the church bake sale.

That leaves just Betty and Jellybean standing together, hands still eagerly linked across the white picket fence.

"Would you like to come over?" Jellybean asks, giving Betty a toothy grin. "I can show you my new room."

"That would be great!" Betty enthuses.

So she skips out onto the sidewalk and back inside the next door yard, and together the girls run giggling up the front steps.

"Well would you look at that," says Jellybean's dad warmly. "You've only been in Riverdale a matter of minutes and already you're making friends. Way to go, honey."

He's very tall - taller than Betty's dad. And very different with his dark scruffy beard and flannel shirt. But his eyes are kind and Betty instantly likes him. He reaches down to ruffle Jellybean's hair as he squeezes past them in the hall to direct the movers as they place furniture in the empty rooms.

The girls take the staircase two at a time, and Jellybean pulls on the sleeve of Betty's sweater to direct her to the room at the end of the upstairs hall.

"This is my room!" she says enthusiastically. "In Toledo I had to share a room with Jug, but now I get my very own room! Isn't it great?"

Betty doesn't know where Toledo is, nor does she think there's anything remarkable about this small empty room with ugly olive green carpet and lemon colored walls. But she's a Cooper, and she really badly wants Jellybean to like her, so she acts super impressed.

"Far out, Bean." comes a gruff voice from the doorway. "Are you picking up neighborhood strays already?"

It's the boy. The older brother.

He's tall and lanky, and wearing a knitted beanie despite the unseasonably warm September weather. He looks weird and he smells weird and Betty almost considers retreating back to the safety of her own home, but thankfully she knows how to deal with crazy older boys (her brother Chic is fifteen and away at military school because her parents couldn't deal with his unruly behavior) so she raises her chin defiantly and looks him dead in the eye.

"Hello." she says, mustering every ounce of confidence in her tiny little body. "I'm Betty Cooper. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Jughead raises an unimpressed brow and almost seems to be making a silent assessment of her worth as a human being. Then, after an uncomfortably long pause, he finally spits out a disinterested "hey" before padded on socked feet back to his own bedroom.

"Don't mind him." Jellybean says frustratedly. "Sometimes he can be a bit of a stinky butt."

And so Betty doesn't mind.

Not on that occasion, nor on any occasions that follow.

The years move quickly, though the town of Riverdale seems cemented in both time and place.

As Archie grows older, he finds himself more interested in football and less interested in playing with his girly next door neighbor. He and Betty remain good friends, but spend much less time together outside of class. So Betty, in turn, spends most of her free time with Jellybean.

The two year age gap doesn't matter much to either of the girls, and both the Cooper and the Jones parents become quickly accustomed to the girls moving freely between their two homes.

Betty helps Jelly with her homework and Jelly helps Betty to overcome some of her shyness. The weekends are for sleepovers, movie marathons and gossiping about the latest edition of Nancy Drew.

Polly sometimes entertains the girls with her tales of middle school and what the glossy magazines have to say about the coolest boy bands. She shows them how to do their hair to impress boys (not that either of them want to do any such thing because...yuck) and explains what French kissing means (once again - yuck).

Chic comes home from school for summer vacations, and he sometimes lets the girls ride in his car when he drives over to Greendale to meet his cool older friends. There's a really great community pool in Greendale with a water slide, and Chic always gives them enough money to buy ice cream before he comes back to collect them and drive them all home.

But Jughead remains firmly aloof. He scoffs at them when they occupy the living room for too long, and forces them to turn off their My Little Pony cartoons. He steals their popcorn when they aren't looking and shouts at them if they enter his bedroom without knocking.

Betty scours the dictionary to find words to aptly describe Jughead, and finally decides on narcissistic, recalcitrant and anti-social. She doesn't like him at all, and can't at all understand why Jellybean thinks the world of him.

Until one Saturday night when Betty is nine and Jellybean is seven.

They are sleeping over at the Jones house, having constructed a makeshift tent in the dining room using bed sheets and chairs. The girls are giggling and playing shadow puppets with their flashlights when the front door slams and the yelling begins.

"You no good worthless bastard!" shouts Jellybean's mother. "Drunk again, I see. What'd I ever do to deserve such a lousy husband?"

"Give it a rest, Gladys." Jellybean's father shouts back, though his words are somewhat slurred. "You'd drink too if you had to put up with a cold hearted bitch for a wife."

Jellybean and Betty both freeze, and Betty can feel herself beginning to tremble with fear. She's never heard such horrible words come out of anyone's mouth before. Especially not a grown up that she knows and trusts.

Moments later, the fabric of the tent shifts and Jughead's face appears at the opening. Betty is scared that perhaps he's going to yell at them too, the same way that Jelly's parents are yelling at each other.

But for some reason his face is uncharacteristically kind. He reaches a hand out to each of them, and they instantly drop their flashlights and allow him to lift them to a standing position. Then he ushers them up the stairs and into the safety of Jellybean's bedroom.

Betty expects him to leave immediately, but instead he sinks onto the floor between them, still tightly clutching both their hands.

"Okay ladies." he says calmly, his voice straining to rise above the sound of the yelling downstairs. "What's your favorite song?"

"Hannah Montana." says Jellybean.

"Best of Both Worlds." Betty adds helpfully, though her voice is shaky.

She expects Jughead to sneer at that, because Hannah Montana is a lame Disney show, but instead he just smiles broadly.

"Great!" he says, perhaps a little too excitedly. "Can you teach it to me? Just, sing really loudly okay?"

Betty has never sung so loudly before, and Jughead has never admired her so fondly.

A week later, Jellybean's father moves out of the house next door to Betty Cooper.

Betty comes home from school to the shock of Jellybean sitting on her front porch sobbing, clutching at the old teddy bear that she still sleeps with at night.

Betty drops her school bag outside her own red front door, then rushes over to sit next to Jelly and wrap a comforting arm around her.

"My daddy is gone." she wails, her face falling into the crevice between Betty's neck and shoulder.

"Where did he go?" Betty frowns, confused.

There's a girl in Betty's class - Josie - whose parents divorced when she was in the first grade. Betty knows that means Josie has to live at two houses, but to be honest she also thinks it sounds kind of fun because Josie gets double gifts on her birthday and at Christmas.

"He went to the southside." Jellybean sobs. "Wherever that is."

Betty doesn't want to upset Jellybean further, but she secretly knows about the southside. It's the othe half of Riverdale. The half on the other side of the railway tracks. The _bad_ side.

She recalls sometimes hearing her mother muttering about the destitute place when she thinks her children can't hear her. The buildings there are delapidated, diseased stray dogs roam the streets in rabid packs and nobody there has a job worth having. It's a putrid hell hole, or at least that's what her mother says.

"And Jug is gone too." Jellybean continues to cry.

Betty's lower jaw drops open in surprise, because for a moment she truly doesn't understand.

Then she remembers when Chic was hanging around those nasty boys at the Midvale Mall, and her parents caught him smoking cigarettes. She doesn't think she's ever seen Jughead smoking before, but perhaps he's been badly behaved too and joined Chic at military school.

"Where did he go?" Betty asks.

"With my daddy to the southside." Jellybean explains through reverberating hiccups. "Everyone was shouting again. Momma yelled that all Jones men are good for nothing. Then Juggie told her if that's the way she feels then he should just leave. So Daddy helped him pack and they left together this morning. Oh Betty, what if I never see them again?"

The crying begins in earnest once more, and Betty doesn't really know what to do.

She wants to comfort and support her best friend, but her parents have never yelled mean things at each other and she never has to worry about her dad or siblings not being at the breakfast table each morning (well, except for Chic, but at least he still has a bedroom upstairs). She doesn't really know what to say to make Jellybean feel better.

Thankfully, Alice Cooper chooses this exact moment to open the front door and almost trip over Betty's discarded school bag. Before she can scold her youngest daughter, she looks across the yard and sees Jellybean sitting despondently on the front steps of the Jones house.

"Come inside, girls." she calls over to them, bending down to graciously collect Betty's bag. "I've made oatmeal cookies."

It turns out that Jellybean does still get to see her dad and brother.

Every second Friday, her father careens down Elm Street in his beat up old pick-up truck and whisks his only daughter away. He doesn't return her until late Sunday afternoons, when the sun is already low enough in the sky that Alice won't allow Betty outside to greet her.

Each time she reappears, Jellybean fills Betty's ears with exciting stories about the southside. It doesn't sound at all like a putrid hell hole (though Betty still isn't exactly sure what a putrid hell hole is meant to sound like).

Jellybean tells her about her nice new friends, the place where her dad now lives (which is called Sunnyside, much to Betty's delight) and riding her bike down to Sweetwater River.

Betty begs her mother to let her go with Jellybean for a weekend, and have a fun sleepover at the southside. But Alice furiously and unequivocally tells her there's no possibility that will ever be happening. No way. No how. Never, ever, ever.

So on the weekends when Jellybean is gone, Betty finds herself quite lonely.

Archie is off doing strange boy things with his popular friends, and Polly has more important older girl things to do. So Betty sits alone in her room, wishing she had a different life.

When Betty is eleven years old, in the summer before she is due to commence middle school, Jellybean's dad comes and collects her for three whole weeks.

By the end of the first week, Betty has already read all of the books on her summer reading list and run out of good shows to watch on television. She is miserable, though she tries not to let her mother see it.

One night, she's chatting on the phone with Chic (who is now nineteen and has chosen to stay nearby his West Coast college over the summer break because Riverdale quote unquote "blows big time") and she laments to her brother how alone she is.

"Come on Betty, you're a smart girl." Chic just laughs. "If you miss Jelly so much just catch a bus to the southside."

It's like a lightbulb flickers on above Betty's head. Because of course Chic is right. It's so simple.

So the next day, Betty raids the desk drawer in Chic's room (with his express permission) and scrounges together enough spare change for bus fares and milkshakes.

She tells her unsuspecting mother that she's going to the library, then packs some snacks in her backpack and races to the bus stop.

Jellybean has never told Betty with exact accuracy where her father actually lives, but Betty doesn't think it will be very hard to find a place as exotic as Sunnyside. So she hops off the bus near Southside Elementary School and starts walking.

Within half an hour, she knows without a shadow of a doubt that she's hopelessly lost. Nothing is familiar to her, and whilst the buildings aren't exactly dilapidated (Betty is old enough now to know that her mother is prone to exaggeration) she's not exactly wandering down the pristine blocks of the northside either.

She's passing by a seedy looking bar, with her bag straps securely wrapped inside her sweaty fists, when a group of teenage boys descend on her.

They're all wearing matching black leather jackets with snake patches stitched onto their backs, and some of them even have visible tattoos on their necks.

"Lookie here, boys." the tallest one sneers. "I've found a northside princess. What's in your backpack, girlie? Time to share."

Betty can remember once reading in a book that dogs can smell fear, and she wonders if these boys are quite the same. She tries not to let the terror show on her face as she starts to back away, but they persue her aggressively.

"Hey!" calls an angry voice from the shadows of the dive bar. "Pea, back off."

"Finders keepers, Jones." the tall boy growls back. "I spotted the little prima donna first so I get to keep her."

Betty spins on her heel at the name Jones and is enormously awash with relief at the sight of Jughead slinking into view.

He looks older now, and somehow harder. He's only fourteen but he's easily as tall as his father with broad shoulders despite his lanky arms and legs.

Betty runs to him, immediately hiding herself behind his frame.

"This here is my kid sister's best friend." Jughead explains calmly. "She's off limits."

"You can't tell us what to do." sniggers a shorter, dark haired boy.

"No. But you don't want to know what my dad will do to any of you if you harm one hair on this girl's head." Jughead argues.

Betty doesn't know why any of these angry looking teenagers should care what Jellybean's dad thinks of them, but they all seem sufficiently concerned.

The boys in the black leather roll their eyes, but don't put up much of a protest. They allow Jughead to roughly snatch Betty by her pressed diamonte collar and drag her back to the bus stop.

"Thank you." she manages to splutter. "Thank you, Jughead, for helping me."

But Jughead's eyes are cold and he doesn't smile back at her. Not like he did that night he sang Hannah Montana with her on the floor of Jellybean's bedroom.

"If you're smart you'll never come back here." he says harshly, practically shoving her onto the next bus north. "Go home, Betty. Don't come back."

Betty never tells anyone about the incident. Not even Jellybean. And she's altogether just glad her mother never discovers the truth because she knows she'll be grounded for life.

Middle school is very different to elementary school. That's the first thing Betty discovers when summer finally ends.

Some of the girls in her class have started growing boobs, and Tina Patel excitedly informs them all that she has her period. That makes her a real woman.

Betty has neither breasts nor her period, so nobody is overly interested in her.

She sits in the front row, like the nerd that the others all already believe she is. When the boys start tormenting her with the name Betsy Wetsy (which makes no real sense because it's Dilton Doiley who wet his pants back in third grade and not her), Archie joins in with the rest of them. That hurts her enough to turn the tips of her ears bright red with shame, but she doesn't have the guts to speak up for herself.

It's different now, because Jellybean is still in elementary school, so they can't walk home together every day. But every second weekend they're still attached at the hip. They spend most of their time at the Cooper residence, because Jellybean's mom is usually a little sad and it's kind of depressing to be at the Jones house.

Jellybean is thrown an ostentatiously large tenth birthday party. Betty doesn't understand why Gladys Jones is abruptly making such a huge effort to be jovial, but she hears her parents whispering something about Jellybean's dad making a fight for custody. Betty doesn't know what that means or why it makes Jellybean's mom suddenly so willing to take them fun places or throw this huge soiree.

On the day of the party, Betty has never seen so many children or balloons in one place before. There's a jumping castle and pony rides and a clown. Even more amazing, Jellybean's dad and brother are also invited. It makes Jellybean so happy to see her whole family in one place again so Betty doesn't even mind that Glady keeps asking her in an extremely loud voice to confirm just how much fun she's having.

Betty is sitting by herself at a picnic table (because Jelly is busy with the other kids and Gladys is being more than a little overwhelming) when Jughead flops onto the bench seat beside her.

"So is this like your shtick now?" he jibes. "Being a weird little loner kid?"

Betty knows that she should fight back about being called a weird loner, because it's not entirely true. She does have friends besides Jellybean - there's Ethel and Kevin who she sometimes hangs out with after school. But she suspects Jughead won't believe her, so she picks the easier insult to rail against.

"I'm not a kid anymore. I'm twelve." she asserts bitingly. "That's the number that comes after eleven, just in case you haven't learnt to count past ten yet."

Jughead's eyebrows creep so high up his forehead Betty wonders if they might actually touch the fabric of that stupid scrappy beanie he wears everywhere.

"Wow." he breathes incredulously. "Looks like shy little Betty Cooper finally grew a pair."

Betty rolls her eyes at him but secretly relishes in the compliment. "Too bad you haven't grown a pair yet." she says, scrambling for a comeback to cover her blush. "I hear life can get pretty lonely for eunuchs."

Betty is suddenly ever so pleased that she stole Chic's collection of George R. R. Martin novels and extended her vocabulary in a whole new way. She can tell by the look on Jughead's face that eunuch is not a word he was expecting to come out of her mouth.

Betty grins and soaks in Jughead's obvious disbelief. She isn't necessarily trying to impress him with her recently developed sarcastic wit (and by recently developed she is mentally referring to the last two minutes of her life, because she's never had the guts to sass someone before) but she is certainly enjoying this feeling of superiority.

"Don't worry, Betts. I'm not lonely on the southside and I promise none of the girls are complaining about what's in my pants." he smirks, leaning in close enough that she can feel his hot breath on her cheek.

Betty withers at that remark, because even though none of the boys at school pay her any attention she definitely knows exactly what Jughead means by his statement. He grins widely as she recoils, clearly pleased that he still has the upper hand in their embattled relationship. 

Sensing the conversation will quickly nosedive into petty squabbling if she remains at the table, Betty stands and makes to leave. But to her surprise, Jughead reaches out his hand to wrap firmly around her bicep and draws her back down to sit beside him.

"Hey, Betts." he says, his face now completely lacking any indication he's messing around. "You're old enough to see through my mom, right?"

"What do you mean?" she frowns, chewing anxiously on her lower lip as she senses his sincerity.

"All this sunshine and rainbows and bullshit that's on show here today." he scoffs, waving a hand from one side of the park to the other. "She's only doing all this to make a point to my dad that she's the better parent. Why do you think she invited us here to witness this monstrosity of a party? She'll do anything to prevent my dad from taking Bean away, even if it's in her best interest not to live here anymore."

The reality of the situation finally hits home for Betty, and a lot of strange little occurrences over the previous few weeks suddenly make sense. But she doesn't know why Jughead would possibly suggest Jellybean leaving her home would be in her best interest. Sure, her mother is a bit sad. But there's a lot of good on Elm Street, too.

"Jellybean is okay here." Betty says insistently. "She has me. I'm here. I'll take care of her."

"I know, Betts." Jughead sighs. "I know. Really, I do."

He tightly squeezes her arm, then abruptly stands and stalks away. Later that night when Betty is getting dressed for bed she notices finger shaped bruises near her elbow and frowns at the memory.  
   
It's the summer before Jellybean is finally due to start at middle school (a moment the girls have literally been waiting years for) when Jellybean's grandmother unexpectedly gets really sick.

Jellybean cries hysterically when she tells Betty that she and her mother are moving back to Toledo to help take care of her. The girls hold each other, tears streaming down their faces, as they promise to write letters and emails and talk on the phone every single day after school.

Betty curses the inequity of the entire rotten world for stripping her of her only remaining friend. But her anger only makes her feel guilty, because she knows Jellybean has it a lot worse - once she moves back to Ohio she won't be able to see her father or brother at all anymore. Gladys actually goes as far as to tell Jellybean that she isn't even allowed to come back over summer vacation, which both girls think is super unfair.

The very last time Betty Cooper sees Jughead Jones is through the closed window of her bedroom.

He is sixteen and obviously now has a license, because it's the low rumble of the bike engine which piques Betty's interest enough to have her scurrying over to the glass to peer outside.

Betty is shocked by the sight of him, mainly because he hasn't really spent any time around the northside since way back when his parents separated. He still wears that silly beanie on his head, but the item of clothing that pulls her attention is the black leather jacket draped across his back.

It's the scary jacket with the two headed snake emblem - same as those boys had been wearing when they'd tried to mug her a few years earlier. A deathly chill runs down Betty's spine at the sight of it. If Jughead is wearing the jacket, does that mean he's turned mean like those boys? Well, even meaner than he already was...

He hasn't even made it up the path of the Jones residence before Jellybean is rushing outside and throwing herself into his arms. She is crying, and perhaps he is too, as he holds her tightly and smooths her unruly black hair.

The moving van isn't due to arrive until the morning, to carry away the Jones boxes and furniture back to Toledo, but Betty realizes that this is likely Jellybean's final moment to say goodbye to her brother. Her heart aches for them both, because she knows how much it hurts her that she never gets to see Chic (who now lives in San Francisco and works in computers) but at least she still has a sibling at home with her.

At that moment Jughead must feel eyes burning into the back of his skull, because he turns and looks up at her bedroom window. For the first time Betty notices that he has an angry red gash down one side of his face and an eye so black it's almost swollen shut. She wonders who hurt him so badly, or what he had to do to deserve such a beating.

He offers Betty a closed mouth smile and a small wave, but she just gasps in fright and backs away from the glass. The curtain falls shut as she moves, shuddering involuntarily as she scampers all the way to the invisible protection of Polly's room.

The days are long, but the years are short.

Betty and Jellybean do their best to keep in contact with each other, but distractions suddenly start getting in the way.

Jellybean's mom (who was already sad to begin with) starts buckling under the pressure of taking care of her ailing mother and Jellybean emails Betty to say she's become mean and sometimes hits her. Betty, in turn, emails Jellybean to let her know that her parents are whispering a lot and she thinks maybe her dad is sick.

Jellybean phones Betty to tell her all about her new group of friends at her new school, and how she's decided to just go by the much cooler moniker JB. Betty texts her back to gossip about Polly's new boyfriend who has hair even redder than Archie and who she spotted climbing up the side of their house the other night after lights out.

After a while, their conversations start to become bi-weekly instead of daily. There are school assignments, extra-curriculars, family dramas and everything in between that take precedence over long distance chats between best friends.

Soon enough, the phone calls and emails become sporadic at best, and the girls mainly stay in touch via social media.

Freshman year of high school brings Veronica Lodge to Riverdale, fresh out of the limousine from the bright lights of New York City and straight to the penthouse at the Pembrooke.

For reasons Betty will possibly never understand, Veronica singles her out as the perfect gal pal companion. She shuns the cheerleaders and the jocks, and asks Betty to be her best friend.

Suddenly Betty isn't alone anymore. She has someone to sit with at lunch, to pass notes to in class, to go shopping with at the mall. Even more than that, Veronica comes with attention.

The girls all want to sit with Veronica, and the boys all want to date her. But Veronica makes it clear that she and Betty are a 2-for-1 deal. So the kids who have grown up explicitly ignoring Betty all suddenly want to be friends with her.

Betty knows that she should say no. She knows that the friendships they're offering are superficial, and based solely on her alliance with the rich and popular Veronica. But in the end she's grateful to have friends at all, so she just smiles and makes room for them in her booth at Pops.

Cheryl asks them both to join the River Vixens, Josie wants to take them out for mani/pedis and Reggie invites them to see the new blockbuster showing at the Bijou.

Most surprising of all, is watching Archie Andrews return to the fold. Suddenly he's all over Betty like a rash - reminding anyone who'll listen that they're neighbors and have _alway_ s been the absolute _best_ of friends. Betty finds his behavior a little odd, but she is mainly just excited to have her oldest friend back in her life. He walks Betty home after school every day and she, in turn, helps him with his homework.

When he invites her to the homecoming dance, she doodles _Mrs Betty Andrews_ across several pages of her diary and spends hours making sure her hair and makeup look perfect.

It's not until mid-way through the dance that Betty realizes Archie had just been using her the whole time as a way to gain access to Veronica. It's _her_ that he's interested in, and not Betty at all. She leaves the school gym in a flood of tears, shocked when Veronica doesn't immediately follow.

The next day, Kevin Keller sheepishly phones her to let her know that Veronica and Archie hooked up at Cheryl Blossom's after party. He's always been on the peripheral of Betty's (admittedly miniscule) friendship circle but she can hear the genuine remorse in her voice as he informs her of the news.

Betty cries and tries to phone Jellybean, but the call goes through to voicemail so she walks to Pops with Kevin instead. They split a milkshake, Kevin admits that he's secretly gay and they decide to be best friends for life.

Veronica tries for weeks to apologize to Betty. She has cupcakes shipped in from New York, offensively large bunches of flowers are delivered to the Cooper residence and she even sends a singing telegram. But for once, Betty remains strong and stands her ground. With Kevin by her side, she doesn't need Veronica or Archie or their manipulative backstabbing.

In Betty's sophomore year, Jellybean phones her in hysterics. It's the first time she's heard from her former best friend for almost three months but she rushes off to her room to take the call in private as soon as she hears the sobs. It takes Betty a while to actually decipher the general gist of JB's words because she's crying so hard, but eventually she figures it out.

It's Jughead. He's been arrested. Something to do with gang crimes, stealing cars and something called the Southside Serpents. He's been sentenced to two years in prison. Not juvie, _real_ prison.

"He's my brother, Betty." Jellybean wails. "He's such a good guy. He doesn't deserve this. He just got mixed up with the wrong crowd. I don't know what to do."

Betty wants to inform JB that in actual fact Jughead was never a particularly nice person, he was always fairly mean to her and prison seems like a rather suitable place for him. He's over eighteen now and he's made his own bed so he should lie in it. But of course she bites her tongue and merely offers her deep condolences.

The week before Betty's sixteenth birthday she is appalled when Kevin informs her that she's almost sweet sixteen and has never been kissed. For some reason this doesn't quite sit well with Betty, so she makes out with Trev behind the bleachers at school. He uses too much tongue (so _that's_ French kissing...) and Betty has to wipe his dribble off her chin when they're done. But she feels pretty smug about the whole thing when she tells an incredulous Kevin about it afterwards.

When Betty is almost through with her junior year of high school, Jellybean's grandmother passes away and Gladys Jones goes completely off the deep end. JB texts Betty moaning about how she doesn't think she can put up with her mother's insane behavior much longer.

Then, almost completely out of the blue, Jellybean Jones packs her bags in Toledo moves back to Riverdale. Except, this time she can't return to her lovely house on Elm Street (because it's been sold to a rather cheesy young corporate couple named the Petersons). So she moves into her brother's old bedroom at her dad's place.

Seventeen year old Betty now knows that Sunnyside isn't actually some kind of idyllic paradise where the sun is always shining. It is, in fact, a trailer park. And not a very nice one. But she has a car now (well, she borrows her mother's car) so she can drive there in relative safely and regularly visit JB once more.

She's so very different, this fifteen year old emo rocker girl with the ear piercings and the black combat boots. It's a stark contrast to prim and proper Betty Cooper's sweater sets and ponytails. But the girls reconnect almost like they've never been apart. Even better - Kevin thinks JB is a real riot, so he welcomes her to hang out with them with open arms.

Through some miraculous loophole, FP manages to convince the district school board that Sunnyside is on the border of the southside and the northside, and they accept JB as a student at Riverdale High. For one amazing year, where Betty and Kevin are seniors and JB is a sophomore, they are an inseparable trio.

But then Kevin is accepted to his absolute dream college - the University of the Arts in London. Similarly, Betty is overjoyed to gain a place at Stanford (because she will be less than an hour drive from her beloved Chic and his new wife in San Francisco).

It's all completely perfect, except for the fact they both have to leave JB behind. And not just a little behind, _a lot_ behind - what with one of them headed to the West Coast and the other to England. But JB insists she will be fine and simply seems thrilled for her friends.

The summer before Betty leaves for college, her father finally succumbs to his long battle with leukemia. Though they'd all known he was sick for quite some time, it's still a terrible shock.

Of the three Cooper children, Betty was always the closest with her dad.  He taught her how to take apart motor engines and they bonded over their shared love of crime fiction. Hal's death leaves a gaping hole in Betty's heart. She sobs and sobs until she doesn't think there are any tears left in her body, and Kevin and JB are there the whole time holding both her hands.

The silver lining of Hal's passing is the inheritance. Obviously the lion's share of the life insurance money goes to his wife, however the Cooper children are also all gifted enough money to comfortably see Betty through college and beyond. Betty buys herself an ostentatious black Range Rover and drives herself across the country to start her new life.

Betty is happy to admit that life as a frosh really isn't so bad. There is no prejudice against her at Stanford for being smart or choosing to spend her time studying. She breaks her mother's heart just a little by choosing structured liberal education, and decides she probably wants to major in history then go into academia.

She starts ditching the ponytails, and instead lets her hair grow down to skim the bottom of her shoulder blades. The California humidity gives her hair a natural wave, which she decides she likes the look of.

She lives on campus in East FloMo, which on the plus side is filled with other freshman so she finds it easy to make a decent amount of friends. The only real drawback is her room's close proximity to the frat houses, which have an unfortunate propensity for hosting parties late into the night when Betty is trying to sleep. So she invests in some ear plugs and quickly moves past it.

Betty meets Grayson at a Kappa Sigma party (one of the events she wisely chooses to remove her ear plugs for) and Betty loses her virginity on a weekend away at the Comfort Inn to celebrate their one month anniversary. It's an awkward and uncomfortable experience (through no real fault of Grayson's) and Betty cries in the bathroom after he goes to sleep. She doesn't cry, however, when Grayson ghosts her six weeks later.

Keeping in touch with JB is a lot easier than keeping in touch with Kevin (who is quickly working his way through the single gay population of London now that he's free of the conservative shackles of an American small town). They FaceTime regularly, and JB tries to pretend her father hasn't fallen off the sobriety wagon once more. Betty feels the devastation like it's palpable, even through the phone screen. But at the same time, at least JB's dad is still alive.

Betty starts off college life visiting Chic every weekend. He seems genuinely delighted to see her and they quickly make up for lost time. But his new wife, Barbara, is a bit of a mouth breather. She has bottle blonde hair, grotesquely fake looking breast implants and a real attitude problem. She doesn't like that Betty monopolizes Chic's time, so Betty visits less and less as the days go by.

Instead, she takes on an internship over summer and then throws herself into preparing for the start of her sophomore year. On the way to the library one morning, Betty is stunned to bump into none other than Veronica Lodge. She is the last person Betty ever expects to matriculate at a school like Stanford, though she must admit it's nice to see a familiar face.

They catch up over coffee and Betty discovers that Veronica is fresh off a gap year and arriving at college for the first time (Betty's sister Polly has also been on a "gap year" ever since she was gifted her portion of Hal's life insurance and is currently away finding herself at a yoga retreat in Nepal) .

Veronica once again begs Betty's forgiveness for what transpired between them in high school. Betty assures Veronica that the whole sordid affair is water off a ducks back, and she's surprised to realize she genuinely means it. High school was a nasty bitchy place, but Betty is adult enough to move on from it without too much residual trauma.

Veronica tells her that she and Archie are still together (another surprise to Betty, though she still can't quite bring herself to care) and doing the long distance thing as he has a football scholarship at Texas A&M. Veronica and Betty find that they enjoy each others' company, and on a whim they decide to room together in housing off campus.

Kevin and JB are both similarly aghast when Betty informs them of her new living arrangements, but Betty feels content with her life choices. With Lodge wealth and the Cooper inheritance, the girls can easily afford to share a decent sized two bed two bath Palo Alto apartment with granite countertops and vaulted ceilings very close by the Stanford shuttle.

Over the course of the academic year, phone calls with Alice Cooper slowly turn weird. They start out filled with normal neurotic demands for Betty to take her Adderall and eat more green salads. But once her mother meets Edgar Evernever, conversations become different.

Betty wants to feel pleased for her mom, because she knows how hard it must be for her all alone in Riverdale. Her husband is dead and her children have all moved away, so a companion is just what she needs.

But Alice first becomes a little spacey, and then starts obsessing over obscure things like activated crystal healing and raw milk baths. Betty has never met this Edgar gentleman, but his influence is both clear and unsettling. Betty truthfully finds it unnerving, and starts screening her mother's calls.

Betty and Veronica are just finishing up their finals at the end of sophomore year when their landlord informs them that Betty's monthly rent payment has been declined. That is how Betty discovers that her bank accounts have been completely drained, and all of her life savings are gone.

Veronica comes to the rescue and pays Betty's half of the rent, with Betty profusely apologizing and promising to pay her back as soon as she can sort this whole mess out. Veronica assures her that it's completely fine and asserts that she's finally putting her American Express black card to good use.

Betty's first and most obvious call is to her mother. But she's stunned to learn that Alice Cooper's phone has been disconnected. Neither Chic nor Polly know anything about Alice or her whereabouts (the exact moment Betty discovers she is the only decent Cooper child who still regularly contacts her one living parent), and nothing at all is wrong with their bank accounts.

Betty sells her fancy Range Rover. With her limited access to financial aid (thanks to her mother's unwillingness to respond to even so much as an email), the profits give Betty just enough to scrape together Stanford fees for the following year. But she is otherwise left without a penny to her name.

For the first time in her life, Betty has several fiercely loyal friends step up and try their hardest to help her.

Veronica (who is already graciously paying Betty's rent) decides to cancel her European summer getaway with Archie to stay and help Betty figure out where her money has gone, but Betty has a sneaking suspicion that Archie intends to propose under the Eiffel Tower so she insists Veronica gets on her plane as planned.

Kevin is thrilled to be chosen as assistant director of an Off-West End play in the months of July and August so he can't come home, but he offers to send Betty the money for a flight over to England to join him. She thanks him for his generosity but decides the best course of action is simply to head back to Riverdale and confront her mother in person.

Veronica, who by this stage is enjoying the romance of Italy, buys Betty's flight online and even upgrades her seat to first class. Betty is awash with relief that as a twenty year old she's lucky enough to finally have the friendship circle she always wanted.

JB picks her up from the airport in her dad's faithful pick-up truck. She's freshly graduated high school and looking every bit like the eighteen year old that she is. Her dark hair is streaked with purple, her jeans are appropriately ripped to keep up with fashion and she has an attitude to match.

Betty cries a little as they hug it out, and JB vows to slap Alice Cooper right in the face if she's so much as touched a penny of her best friend's money. Betty assures her there'll be no need, as the whole thing must simply be a misunderstanding.

When the truck stops on Elm Street in front of the house with the red front door, both girls are shocked into silence at the sight of the For Sale sign pitched into the lawn. Even worse, it's been branded with a large SOLD sticker. Betty gets a sickening sinking feeling in every muscle in her body as she peers through the front windows of her now completely empty childhood home.

Minutes later Fred Andrews comes out of his own house to greet them, his hands grasping sympathetically at Betty's shoulders as he informs her that Alice and Edgar sold literally everything and then told him they were planning to disappear 'off grid'.

This time Betty cries so hard she can't even breathe, because it's become painfully obvious that her mother has actually stolen her money. Not only that, she's also given away all her worldly possessions. Or at least everything that's not already with her in California. Clothes, photos, books, childhood ballet trophies, even her old stuffed animal collection. All gone.

Betty has no idea what to even do about such a thing. Should she get the police involved? Is it legally stealing if Alice has technically stripped the money from her own accounts? Betty feels so stupid for leaving the money in one of her parents' sub-accounts where her mother could even access it.

Then she rationalizes that Alice has always been the perfect Stepford Wife, and this behavior is just so outrageously out of character that Betty had no reason not to trust her. 

JB tries to cancel her shift at Pops Diner (where she's now employed as a waitress), but Betty insists that she goes off to work as per normal (mainly because at least one of them need not be completely broke). So she's given the keys to the trailer at Sunnyside and told to make herself at home, to try to rest and just eat whatever she wants from the fridge.

Betty has just enough change for a bus fare and disembarks at the Southside Elementary School, just the same as she did when she was eleven years old. She knows the way this time, which is at least an improvement.

She is walking past that old dive bar (which she now knows is a seedy establishment called the Whyte Wyrm where the local gang hangs out) when she hears footsteps fall into pace behind her. Damn her and her bad luck, because she truly doesn't have the patience to deal with any sort of confrontation nor does she have a single damn thing worth stealing.

"Show yourself." she calls angrily into the shadows. "Who's there?"

The man that steps out from the side of the building is nothing like what she expected and yet instantly enough to take her breath away. Tall, dark, impossibly handsome in a James Dean kind of way.

It's _him_. Of course it's him.

He's wearing both a Serpents jacket and a pretentious smirk, with a cigarette dangling idly between two fingers on his right hand.

Something salacious stirs Betty's stomach, apparently of it's own accord, and she struggles to force the feeling down.

"It's just me - your friendly neighborhood Serpent." he shrugs nonchalantly.

She rolls her eyes and folds her arms confidently across her chest. In this time and in this place with _this_ particular human being, she refuses to be bettered. She isn't the timid little girl anymore, and he isn't her best friend's big scary older brother. She downright refuses to bow down to his overt display of machismo.

"Jughead Jones. I forgot they let you out of jail." she deadpans disinterestedly. "I almost didn't recognize you without your stupid hat."

"Betty Cooper." he drolls in return, taking a lazy drag of his cigarette. "I almost didn't recognize you without your ponytail. Thank God you clearly still have that gigantic stick up your ass to help identify you." 

Betty doesn't know what's wrong with her because she's known Jughead since she was seven years old, but for the first time she is noticing how attractive he actually is. Tan skin and icy blue eyes and _holy shit stop because he's staring_. The logical part of her brain reminds her that she's probably just effected by a combination of stress and exhaustion.

She tries to temper the rising heat in her emotions, because she knows all too well that JB's brother can be biting and sarcastic. If she shows him any weakness, he'll outwit her quickly and force her uncomfortably into a proverbial corner.

She is in the middle of mentally preparing a super cynical statement about the distastefulness of nicotine when, quite devastatingly, there's a momentary failure in her brain-to-mouth filter system.

"You wish you could get near my ass." she says teasingly, before she can stop herself.

She is instantly mortified by what she has said, and desperately hopes the tips of her ears remain a normal neutral color. She suspects from Jughead's comically raised eyebrows that they don't.

"Well gosh, Betts." he chuckles throatily. "I'm flattered by your offer, but I'm going to have to politely decline."

Betty knows she's becoming irrational, but she is also affronted. "I made no such offer, you disgusting slimeball. Now why don't you just crawl back into the hole you staggered out of and leave me alone."

She turns and begins walking away, mainly because she knows if she stays she is going to embarrass herself further. But she's instantly appalled when she realizes he is trailing her down the block.

"I said buzz off." she calls furiously over her shoulder. "Are you deaf?"

"You'll be pleased to know that my hearing is perfectly adequate, thank you." he calls back merrily. "But you _are_ walking towards _my_ house, are you not? Maybe I'm just walking home."

"Perfectly adequate." she scoffs. "That's probably the best compliment any lover has ever been able to scrounge up about you."

_Far out, Betty_. She admonishes herself for once again resorting to using sexual remarks as innuendo or insult. She doesn't know what's wrong with her. She's truly losing her mind.

"You want to hear some compliments about the way I make love?" he asks cheekily, jogging to catch up with her so they're face to face again. "You should ask your mom."

Betty gasps in shock and shakes her head. "That's terrible." she says, never slowing her pace. "You're terrible, Jughead Jones."

"That's not what your mom said last night." he winks at her.

Betty scowls at his audaciousness and doesn't even dignify his vile comment with a response. Clearly (and thankfully) JB hasn't filled Jughead in on the intricacies of her personal life. Though truth be told, if this idiotic boy (idiotic twenty-three year old man) had actually slept with her mother the night before, at least Betty may actually be able to finally track down her missing money.

When she arrives at Sunnyside, she pushes her way inside the trailer and doesn't bother holding the door open for the boy stalking her. It momentarily slams shut, before he shoves it open and enters the space behind her.

She feels a bit bad about being so rude to him, but then never in their entire lives has he ever been particularly nice to her. So in the grand scheme of things, she owes him several more years of bitchy behavior if she wants to even their playing field.

Betty dumps her luggage on the worn fabric couch and slips her feet out of her sandals. The trailer is neat and tidy, though still run-down and in desperate need of a lick of paint. She yawns loudly, but tries to conceal it by placing her hand over her mouth.

She is vaguely aware of Jughead moving around behind her and she hazardously peeks a glance at him. He has shucked his Serpents jacket to reveal a generous array of tattoos beneath his faded black t-shirt. There's also a jagged keloid scar running the length of his left shoulder all the way down to his elbow, and she suddenly wants to ask him how he got it.

"You're tired." he says abruptly.

It's supposed to be a question, but it sounds more like a statement. So she just shrugs, wringing her hands and suddenly apprehensive to be alone with someone she hasn't actually seen in person for several years.

"You can sleep in JB's room if you want." he offers, indicating down the hall, before a smirk forms on his lips. "Just remember the golden rule to stay out of _my_ room."

She raises her eyebrows at that. "I know for a fact there's only two bedrooms in this trailer. Where do you sleep? In a kennel?" 

Something dark and unreadable passes across the features of his face as he shakes his head. "My old man hasn't been seen around these parts for months, so I claimed his bedroom fair and square."

Betty's lower jaw slacks. She has no idea about any such thing and she's at a loss as to why JB would withhold such pertinent information.

"Well where did he go?" Betty gasps.

"Fuck knows." Jughead gnashes, attempting to wave away her evident concern with a flourish of his hand. "He's probably drunk in a ditch somewhere. Not every family is as idyllic as yours, Princess."

Betty wants to scream at him that he couldn't be more wrong. That his bullshit prejudice against her is so far off the mark it's not funny. Her siblings make no effort, her father is six feet under and her mother has just stripped her of all her assets to run off into the wilderness with a crazy hippy. Her family is the entire _opposite_ of idyllic.

But he's right about one thing - she really is tired. Much too tired to fight him on this one. So she simply turns and heads down the short hall to JB's room.

There's a messy pile of clothes on the floor near the dresser and the bed is unmade, but Betty feels comforted by the familiarity of the space. It reminds her of senior year of high school, when her dad was still around and her family was yet to fall apart.

Without a moment's hesitation, Betty collapses onto the mattress and almost immediately falls into a deep sleep.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the positive response to my last chapter! Chapter 2 was written and ready to go a few days ago, but I decided it was actually too much darkness too soon so I stripped it right back and pushed some of the heavy plot into a later chapter. Hope you enjoy.

Betty, completely overcome with exhaustion, sleeps through dinner and doesn’t even stir when Jellybean comes home from work and joins her in the bed.

She does, however, wake to the sound of Jellybean’s 7am alarm the following morning. JB moans agonizingly, hits snooze and throws a pillow over her face in protest. But Betty sits up, rubbing at her eyes with fisted knuckles.

As the fog of slumber clears from her brain, she becomes acutely aware that she'd been dreaming of Jughead. Not sexy dreams (thank the Lord above), but not nightmares either. Though perhaps the happy theme of her dreams is a nightmare in and of itself. She should _not_ be dreaming of Jughead in any way, shape or form and she knows it.

She throws back the covers, plugs her phone into the charger and then googles when the Riverdale Sheriffs’ Office opens for business on a weekday morning. She grabs a towel and heads across the short hallway to the bathroom.

But rattling on the handle, she is shocked to find it locked. Thinking perhaps the door is just a little sticky, she rattles the handle again.

“I’m in here! Wait your turn!” calls out an unimpressed masculine voice.

Betty groans and tries not to think about the fact there’s a good chance Jughead is standing on the other side of just a thin piece of wood and most likely naked.

Then it’s _all_ she can think about, so she hurries back to JB’s room and slams the door behind her. JB grunts at the disturbance but remains otherwise silent beneath her pillow.

Fifteen minutes later, Betty ventures cautiously out into the hall again and reaches for the bathroom door handle. Still locked.

This time she is annoyed enough to bang loudly with a closed fist. “Come on, Jug. Some of us actually have places to be this morning. Can’t you jack off in your bedroom instead of in the shower?”

 _Oh shit._ That was _not_ what she had intended to say out loud.

Seconds later, the bathroom door comes swinging open and Betty is assaulted by a thick cloud of warm steam.

Then Jughead is standing directly in front of her, a towel slung low on his hips, and his upper body still glistening with water droplets from his shower. There’s a toothbrush hanging lazily from his mouth and for all that he looks like sex on legs he also seems fairly annoyed by the disturbance.

Betty’s eyes go straight to Jughead’s pronounced V muscle and the tantalizing trail of dark hair that commences at his belly button then slips enticingly beneath the fabric of his towel. She can feel her bottom jaw quickly slacking and her mouth falling open as her brain becomes addled with lust.

She fights against the feeling with every rational cell in her body, but her recovery time is fractionally too slow and Jughead definitely notices.

“Do you want something?” he asks, withdrawing the toothbrush from his mouth and pointing it accusingly in her direction. “Or did you just want to check me out?”

“I…I…” she splutters, shaking her head to clear her mind. “I need to shower. I need you -”

“You need me?” he interjects with a smirk. “Well how presumptuous of you, Blondie. But I never shower with girls before the third date.”

“No.” she gasps, suitably outraged. “I need you to get out of the bathroom. I’m in a hurry so you need to vacate.”

“Well I have somewhere I need to be too.” he shrugs defiantly. “So you’re welcome to shower while I finish up in the bathroom. But I can’t promise to look the other way, so perhaps you should just wait until I’m done. Or maybe not…”

Betty just stands in the doorway glaring daggers at him, and when she doesn’t respond he simply shrugs again then heads back inside the room and let’s the door click shut behind him.

Still fuming, Betty stomps down to the kitchen and loads the toaster with two pieces of bread. She figures she might as well fill her belly while she’s waiting for the jerk in the bathroom to finish wasting her time.

When the toast pops (still not golden enough for her liking) she snatches them roughly from the appliance before sitting down at the small dining table.

JB wanders sleepily from her bedroom while Betty’s still working on chewing and swallowing the first piece, and her eyes narrow suspiciously at her best friend as she begins helping herself to a large bowl of cereal.  

“Why are you eating dry toast?” she asks with a frown.

“Don’t ask.” Betty grumbles, not willing to admit she was too petty to add peanut butter to her breakfast food of choice. “Why is your brother monopolizing the bathroom?”

“It’s Friday.” JB says, as if this is an incredibly obvious answer. “It’s a work day.”

As if on cue, Jughead comes traipzing confidently out of the bathroom. He’s now dressed in short sleeved navy coveralls, artfully adorned with grease stains, and he rudely plucks the second piece of toast from Betty’s plate as he sits down across from her.

“I have a job, you know.” he says wryly, biting down on the plain bread then making a face of obvious distaste.

Betty’s eyebrows raise proportionally to the size of her cynicism. “A job? Oh is that how you gang members refer to your raping and pillaging these days?”

Jughead concedes enough to chuckle at her remark, but then serves her a heated look. “I don’t _ever_ rape, Betty. But if I feel like pillaging later, I’ll definitely let you know.”

He winks at her crudely and her face morphs into a disgusted grimace. “That doesn’t even make any sense. Your attempt at sexual innuendo is poorly lacking.”

“I’ll tell you what’s lacking and that’s any kind of spread on this awful piece of toast.” he replies, dropping the half-eaten slice unceremoniously back onto Betty’s plate. “Who hurt you to cause you to eat such inedible food?”

“Your mom.” Betty replies snidely. “Last night.”

The intention had been to mimic the petty words he’d thrown at her the previous afternoon, but the execution of the attempt is sorely lacking. The words are out of her mouth before she’s fully thought them through and she regrets them instantly. Jughead, for his part, immediately bursts out laughing.

“Wow. My mom hurt you?” he asks, still chuckling. “Was _that_ supposed to be sexual innuendo? Because damn. Did she hurt you before or after you spent fourteen hours snoring loudly in my sister’s bedroom?”

“I do not snore!” she snaps, completely incensed by this frankly abhorrent accusation.

“You do, Betts.” he argues lightly. “But it’s cute snoring. Like a freight train, but it’s been painted pink and it’s transporting large quantities of glitter.”

Before Betty can even muster a response to the convoluted insult, JB drops her spoon and it clatters loudly onto the formica. Both Betty and Jughead are shocked enough to immediately turn to her in surprise.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Jellybean asks incredulously. “Are you two flirting? I mean, is this how you two flirt? Because it’s super weird.”  

Betty opens her mouth to retort in the negative, but then slams it shut again. Because in actual fact, she isn’t entirely sure what exactly _is_ going on between her and Jughead. Is it flirting? Or is it just their dislike for one another coming to the surface? It’s awkwardly hard to tell.

“I don’t need to flirt.” Jughead announces proudly. “I ooze boyish charm and the girls just naturally flock to me.”

“You’re deluded.” JB responds, rolling her eyes. “The only charming person living in this house is me.”

At that, Jughead reclaims the piece of toast he’d thoughtlessly gnawed on and lobs it unskilfully in his sister’s direction. She sidesteps it easily and it lands on top of the refrigerator. All three pairs of eyes in the trailer stare at it in abject silence.

“Well that tasteless abomination belongs to the mice now.” Jughead deadpans, before rising to his feet. “And on that note I’m off to work.” he turns to Betty with a shit-eating grin. “That being my place of gainful employment, not an uprising of violent peasants planning to loot the local Whole Food Market.”

Betty truly wishes she could think of something smart in retort. But the part (very small part) of her that’s witty isn’t shrewd enough to concoct anything decent. So Jughead leaves via the front door looking ridiculously too pleased with himself, calling out an upbeat “Bye Bean! Later, Steam Train!”

Jellybean stands on tiptoe to retrieve the bread from the roof of the fridge, tosses it in the bin, then moves to take Jughead’s recently vacated seat at the table.

“So you and Juggie, hey?” she asks bluntly, barely masking her delight.

“I…what?” Betty mumbles clumsily. “No. That’s…no. Jelly, no.”

“I know last time you saw him he was involved in some shady stuff. But he’s trying hard to turn his life around.” Jellybean tells her. “He’s removed himself from as much Serpents activity as he can, and he’s opened up an auto repair shop down on South Avenue. He works hard and he’s a good guy, Betts.”

Betty tries her best to conceal the fact she finds this information infinitely interesting. She’s never before imagined Jughead with a normal 9 to 5 job, but he’s clearly making an effort not to fall down the same dark path as his father and that’s something to be commended. It may even be something she admires in him.

“That’s nice, Jelly.” she replies politely. “But I’d never do something as awful as go after your brother.”

"Oh please, Betts," Jellybean laughs. "This isn't some cheesy Netflix Original teen rom com. I'm not going to ask you to choose between your best friend and your crush. If you like my brother, please just put us all out of our misery and do something about it."

Betty feels her face flushing pink. She truthfully isn’t sure what’s going on with her feelings for Jughead, but she certainly has more pressing issues she needs to deal with first.

“What I _am_ going to do,” Betty says, deftly diverting attention to a marginally less controversial topic. “Is have a chat with the police and see if they can help me with my parental situation.”

“That’s great.” JB enthuses, easily allowing herself to become distracted. “I have a shift that starts in an hour, so I can drive you to the station on my way to Pops.”

At exactly 9.53am, Betty finds herself standing outside the Sheriffs' Office.

Betty has never met the new sheriff before, as he’s only been in Riverdale for the five months since Kevin’s dad retired. But she’s heard that he’s efficient enough at the job (from Kevin) and that he’s also fairly decent eye candy (from JB). So keeping the first fact in mind and fully discarding the other, Betty approaches the deputy working the front desk to ask for an appointment.

She’s told to come back in an hour, but having nowhere else to go she simply takes a seat in the waiting area. The minutes seem to trickle as slowly as years, but Betty tries to keep her brain busy by reading the weirdly unhumorous informational posters adorning the walls ("Donut judge me! I'm a Deputy Sheriff!")

Sheriff Minetta invites her to step inside his office at 11.09am and Betty decides instantly that he looks far too young to be in charge of this whole town. He's self-assured and suave (okay, Betty can grudgingly concede JB’s point) yet he also seems kind and listens attentively as Betty explains the circumstances of her unexpected visit home.

Unfortunately, whilst Minetta is genuinely sympathetic to Betty’s situation, he informs her that the matter of her missing money is civil rather than criminal because her mother removed the funds from an account to which she was the sole signatory.

All he can do to assist is give Betty the business card for local attorney Sienna McCoy (like Betty can even afford a pack of Skittles from the vending machine in the corridor let alone legal advice from the mom of one of her old classmates) and file a missing persons report for Alice Cooper. He also advises her to remain in Riverdale for as long as possible, just in case her mother decides to return home of her own volition.

Betty miserably trudges all the way back to the trailer, thoughts buzzing in her head about how ridiculous the situation is. The last thing she wants is to be stuck in Riverdale, a town where she has nothing and nobody (apart, of course, from JB), when she could be back in California in the comfort of her own home and looking for a proper part-time job to pay her way through the rest of her college life.

After the heat of the day begins to take its toll on her walk, she stops to rest under the shade of a large maple tree and decides now would be as good a time as any to contact her nearest and dearest and provide them with an update.

First she phones Kevin (and leaves him a voicemail message), then she tries Polly (whose phone is unsurprisingly switched off - they don't get much cell service in Bali or wherever the hell she is this month) and then finally she calls Veronica.

Despite the international time difference, Veronica picks up on just the second ring and is fuming mad when Betty fills her in on what she has discovered regarding the Alice Cooper financial scandal of the year (or at least that's how V refers to the entire saga).

Veronica ardently encourages Betty to speak with the Attorney McCoy and then as if suddenly remembering Betty’s precarious access to funds she also insists that she'll keep covering both halves of the rent indefinitely at their Palo Alto apartment (despite Betty's strenuous protesting otherwise). Veronica even offers to hire a private investigator to try and track down Alice if the police are unhelpful.

Betty agrees to call her again in a few days and provide her with another update, but also forces Veronica to solemnly promise she will continue to enjoy her romantic European getaway with her main squeeze. Veronica has been nothing but kind to her since the whole ordeal began and the last thing Betty wants to do is ruin her amazing vacation.

After disconnecting the call, Betty dials Chic's number. She is extremely relieved when, like Veronica, her brother also answers.

But the palpable relief soon turns to dread as Chic is significantly less supportive and instead extremely critical of his youngest sister.

"How could you be stupid enough to leave your bank account under Mom's control?" he yells down the phone line. "For Christ's sake, Elizabeth. You're twenty years old. You're not a child anymore. You need to grow up."

Chic has always been Betty's biggest supporter (or perhaps Betty has just always kept Chic on a pedestal, because he really wasn't around that much when she was growing up) and it hurts her deeply to hear him speak to her so harshly.

"Chic did you hear me?" she replies, her voice shaking with emotion. "I said Mom sold our house. She sold _all_ our stuff. This isn't just about me - it's about all of us. Don't you care?" 

"No.” he snaps. “Because all my stuff is here at my _own_ house. What do I care for some ugly little house in a dead-end town like Riverdale?" he ceases his ranting temporarily at the sound of a muffled female voice and when he commences speaking again it's not to Betty. "No, Barb. I'm not giving her a cent of our money. No, there's no way I'm paying her college fees. You don't have to worry, darling. Go back to watching Real Housewives."

"Oh my god, Chic." Betty cuts in heatedly. "I'm not asking you to pay for Stanford. I'm just asking for a little compassion."

Chic sighs and there’s a long pause before he speaks again. “I feel bad for you, sweetie, You’ve always been so naïve and it’s sad you’ve ended up in such a sad little predicament.”

Betty can’t even believe the bullshit coming out of her brother’s mouth. The only reason he has his fancy job and his nice house and his vapid wife with the glaringly uneven boobs is because their parents _paid_ for his _entire_ college experience (both undergraduate _and_ graduate school) at Caltech.

Now, thanks to their crazy mother, she would never get that same opportunity. She was never going to finish school debt free and sail straight into a high salary job where she could immediately start saving for a house deposit. She knows Chic is the naïve one if he truly doesn't understand how lucky he had it.

Betty only realizes she’s been silent for too long when Chic’s voice returns in a hissed whisper.

“I’ll Venmo you a couple hundred dollars, okay? Just don’t tell Barbara, for Christ’s sake. That woman does my head in almost as much as you do.”

Betty wants to tell him to shove his money up his wife’s (almost definitely) bleached asshole. But in truth she desperately needs it, so instead she bites the inside of her cheek and quietly thanks Chic for his generosity. 

She continues her walk back to Sunnyside, and pauses momentarily when she reaches South Avenue. It's the southside's version of the main street and she knows there's a coffee shop that serves decent coffee. She also has a niggling desire to try and find Jughead's auto shop. 

Not that she _wants_ to catch another glimpse of him in those cute coveralls. She's simply curious to see what kind of set up he's got going on for himself (okay and maybe she does also want to see the coveralls). 

The fact Betty doesn't actually have enough money to afford a cup of coffee crosses her mind, and she suspects Jughead will just make more jokes about locomotives. So she turns in the other direction and cuts through the back of the cemetery to reach the trailer park. 

To her surprise, Jughead is already home when she opens the door. He's spread across the couch, watching an old black and white movie, with a bowl of popcorn resting precariously on the flat expanse of his stomach. 

He lifts his head in her direction at the sound of the key in the lock, then smugly grins when she looks annoyed by his presence in the trailer. 

"It's 1pm." she says, dropping her backpack onto the coffee table. 

"Do you know where your children are?" he singsongs sarcastically. "No but seriously though, thanks for the time update." 

"I just mean why are you here watching Hitchcock?" she asks, cocking an eyebrow towards the television. "Aren't you supposed to be off at your alleged place of gainful employment?"

Jughead shifts the popcorn bowl so that he can sit up fully, his face is awash with amusement but something a little more serious is festering in the blue of his eyes. 

"I'll have you know this is actually an Ingmar Bergman film." he says in reply. "And I'm not at work because there wasn't any work to do this afternoon. Business is a little, ah, slow." 

"Why?" Betty frowns, dropping a bent knee onto the dark wooden coffee table as she leans over him. "You're a good mechanic, right? So why wouldn't you be getting business?" 

Jughead rolls his eyes, clearly annoyed at her persistent questioning. But to Betty's surprise he doesn't dismiss her, despite clearly itching to do so. He does, however, double down on the sarcasm.

"Because I don't know if you know this, but I'm a convicted felon." he says dryly. 

"Not for doing anything violent!" Betty protests, suddenly unsure why she's even trying to defend him or his honor. 

She can still remember exactly how little she cared back when he was sent off to prison a few years earlier. She may even have considered his punishment just and fair. Now, for some reason, she wishes he had a different life - much the same as her. 

"No, Betts, for grand theft auto." he replies dankly. "A little fact that tends to turn potential customers away." 

The ridiculousness of his predicament doesn't escape her. 

"Well maybe you should have thought about that before you chose cars as your profession." she shrugs, because really this answer must be obvious. 

"What else am I going to do?" he groans, flopping back onto the couch. "I don't have any other skills. Nobody wants to employ me. So it's either this or keep running dangerous jobs for the Serpents. And I told my old man I'm done with that. Now maybe I can't even do this."

Betty sighs and runs the palm of her hand down her face. She doesn't have the energy to deal with a Jughead Jones pity party, and yet somehow she knows she will. She _cares_ about him, in spite of herself. In spite of their tumultuous history. 

Betty falters, unsure of what to say. In truth, she's never been particularly good at comforting people. On the surface it seems so unlikely, because Betty has built her personal brand on being particularly nice and particularly helpful to others. 

But she was raised by Alice Cooper, who was always far more into keeping up appearances than concerning herself with how her children were feeling. To her close friends, she has learned to be loving. But to the rest of the world Betty is friendly and obliging, whilst remaining constantly emotionally unattached. 

"I didn't mean to unload all of that onto you." Jughead groans, when Betty remains silent for too long. "I know you don't do well with touchy feely stuff." 

Her eyes go wide with shock at his swift and correct assessment, even as she fights the urge to argue with him. She doesn't even think he's trying to bait her into one of their weird flirty little confrontations. It's just that he seems to understand her - which is slightly terrifying. 

"I'm touchy feely." she finally protests, unable to resist. 

 Jughead snorts and shakes his head. "Do you remember that time JB's goldfish died and she was crying? Instead of hugging her, you calmly informed her that fish don't have a neocortex so it's unlikely they have consciousness or feel pain and you didn't know why she was so upset." 

Betty gasps and reaches out to playfully swat his shoulder with her hand. "I was just a little kid!" she objects heatedly, though she's trying hard to stifle a laugh. "Although I will admit I was so shy back then and I didn't have the best social skills."

"Shy?" he smirks. "I thought you were aloof. Unapproachable."

Betty can see from the expression on his face that he's joking now, so she ceases to take anything he says personally. 

"Whereas you were just so charming and sweet? I don't think so." she goads back. "At least twi -"

Without warning, Jughead's arm snakes out and wraps itself around the back of Betty's knees. Her mouth immediately clamps shut from the shock of his fingers dancing across the bare skin of her leg, and her chest stills as she momentarily forgets to breathe. 

Her confused eyes meet his - amused yet determined. And there's something sultry smouldering within them. It makes the cerulean blue of his irises appear glassy and bright. 

"Just checking to see if you really are touchy feely now." he whispers intemperately. 

"I told you that I am." she whispers back, practically leaning into his physical contact. 

Suddenly it's like she can't control her limbs because she senses herself moving off her perch on the coffee table and towards him on the couch. His hand continues to move further around her legs to help draw her in and his breathing quickens in anticipation. 

"Sugar! Oh honey honey." comes a deep, melodic voice. "You are my candy girl and you've got me wanting you." 

Betty shrieks and throws herself back in surprise at the musical interruption to whatever it was exactly that they were actually about to do.  

"That's my ringtone." she gasps by way of explanation. 

She awkwardly untangles herself from Jughead's arms and reaches into the back pocket of her denim shorts to withdraw her cell phone. Kevin's name is lighting up the screen with an incoming call.

"I...um." Betty stutters. "I have to take this. Excuse me." 

Without so much as a backward glance, Betty runs into JB's room and shuts the door behind her. 

The phone call with Kevin only lasts twenty minutes (enough time for Betty to fill Kevin in on the cataclysmic money situation and Kevin to fill Betty in on the Grindr hook-up scene in the greater Kensington area). 

When she ends the call, she can hear Jughead has turned his movie back on and she feels anxiety creeping into her chest. She knows she should go back out into the living room, but she's suddenly way too nervous. 

It's not that she hasn't ever kissed boys before, because of course she has. She's had crushes on boys, she's dated boys, she's slept with boys. 

But there's something about Jughead that's different. The simmering sexual tension is intense on a whole new level. Perhaps it's the fact she's known him most of her life. Or maybe his 'bad boy with the heart of gold' persona is working it's magic on her. Perhaps it's something else in entirely. 

To take her mind off her embarrassing reaction to Jughead's unexpected move, Betty begins writing a list of all the possible places her mother could have run off to with that creepy conman Edgar Evernever. After a while, she stands up to stretch and pop the tensely coiled muscles in her neck and back. 

Through the open window, Betty can see that the skyline is painted pink with the rapidly setting sun, and she estimates she's been holed up in the bedroom for maybe four hours.

She notices movement in her peripheral and for a moment she panics, thinking maybe it's Jughead. But then she catches sight of long hair and a Pops uniform as the figure moves toward her.

"Well hello there." JB coos, flopping onto the bed. "I brought home some burgers and fries. If you're hungry I suggest you grab some from the kitchen now before Jug devours the lot."

"Thanks." Betty replies, her voice slightly hoarse from lack of use. "And thank you for letting me stay here for a couple of days."

"Betts don't be silly. My home is your home." JB responds brightly and immediately. "You can stay here forever if you want."

Betty laughs and shakes her head, but her best friend's words jog a recent memory in her brain and her thoughts turn quickly to more pressing matters. Something she’d been meaning to bring up with JB the following day, before she fell asleep (and slept for fourteen hours but _didn't_ snore).

"Speaking of homes, why didn't you tell me that FP hasn't been living here?" she implores, sitting cross-legged on the mattress.

JB's face lights up with surprise, then she sighs deeply. "Honestly? I didn't think it was that big of a deal. It's not like Dad hasn't gone off on benders before. I just keep waiting for him to come stumbling through the front door."

Throughout their childhoods, FP had always meandered through good patches and bad patches - especially when it came to his sobriety. But he was always so warm and inviting, and Betty liked the way he treated her as if she was part of his family. He made her feel wanted. The idea of something bad happening to him now makes her palms instantly slick with sweat.

"Well do you want me to help you look for him?" Betty asks, a hand reaching out to clutch at JB's arm.

"Are you kidding me? No." Jellybean laughs incredulously. "We need to find your insane mother before we find my lame ass drunk father."

Betty groans and lets her aching body fall back onto the bed. Oh yes. Her mother. She knows at the very least she needs to start compiling a list of all the places her mother might be hiding out. But at this point, she's maxed out on the energy she needs to even begin the task. 

She then thinks about her beloved father; dead at forty-eight. JB's dad; missing in action. JB's mom; probably on a bender herself somewhere in Ohio. And now her own mom; blowing through all her daughter's personal life savings with her weird new boyfriend. Not a single one of their parents is around and able to be depended on.

"Our parents all suck." she solemnly declares.

Oddly, this succinct yet depressing statement suddenly causes JB's face to split into a wide and mischievous grin. The unexpected reaction is enough to stir worry somewhere in Betty's stomach.

"Thankfully I have just the cure for asshole parents!" JB boldly announces. "There's a huge party at the old soap factory tonight. You in?"

Betty bites her lip and carefully contemplates the offer. She knows she certainly isn't in a particularly wild mood, but neither does she think she can sleep anymore or cry any more tears, and if she sits around the trailer her unsettled mind will likely start to spiral.

"Definitely." she nods eagerly.

JB squeals in delight and leaves Betty to get dressed. She disappears back out into the living room, muttering about organizing pre-drinks and making sure her brother still plans to accompany them.

Betty finds her old floral canvas backpack, stuffed full of clothes that would never have been granted the Alice Cooper seal of approval, stashed in the back of JB's tiny closet and begins sifting through the contents.

After careful deliberation she finally selects a pleated red plaid mini skirt, studded black tank top with a generous neckline and a pair of knee high black leather boots. It's Catholic school girl meets bad biker babe chic. Alice would surely die if she saw it, which makes Betty even more pleased.

As Betty is using JB's smudged dresser mirror to apply makeup (a thick layer of kohl for her eyes, accentuated cheekbones, red stained lips) she hears the heated voices of the Jones siblings on the other side of the bedroom door.

"Are you out of your mind, Bean? You can't take her to a southside party. She'll get eaten alive."

Betty pauses, eyeliner pencil mid-way through it's job, to grit her teeth and scowl at Jughead's ill conceived opinion of her. It's been way too long since the three of them have been forced to co-exist in the same space and she'd almost forgotten how much of a jerk he could be.

"Chill out, Buzz Killington. Betty's been to southside parties before. You know, while you were in _jail_." comes JB's swift and sarcastic response.

"Tame house parties, maybe. But you know soap factory parties are open invitation for the entire district. The place will be crawling with Ghoulies and they'll spot that little Pollyanna a mile away."

Betty decides this is the perfect time to make her presence known. She tussles her hair, throws open the bedroom door and saunters out into the living room.

She bypasses the squabbling duo (who immediately both fall remarkably silent) and goes straight to the kitchen to help herself to a now mostly cold burger. She languidly takes two large bites, chews and swallows before leaning up against the island bench and casually looking over at them.

"Fun fact about the film Pollyanna." she says, consciously snaking her tongue out of her mouth to lick a smear of burger sauce from the corner of her lip. "The little girl who played that character was subsequently offered the titular role in the film Lolita. But her parents turned it down because they thought Lolita was too slutty. What do you guys think?"

JB is unable to wipe the smug and satisfied grin off her face. She is no stranger to these clothes, nor seeing Betty wearing them. In fact, they'd gone shopping for them together a few years earlier. They'd deliberately chosen clothes to help Betty blend into the southside, and also to help her build her confidence with her own body image while they were at it.

But Jughead is experiencing this side of Betty for the first time, and he suddenly looks too stunned to even speak. It’s a complete reversal of their awkward moment outside the bathroom earlier that morning.

His eyes appear to almost glaze over, as he just stands there plainly gawking. Betty flushes pink under the intensity of his gaze, and the way it keeps brazenly traveling the length of her body. She's mostly certain that his reaction to the outfit is positive, though she can't be completely sure. His face is somewhat blank, and she's never been especially good at reading his eyes.

"Jug I don't ever remember you ever ogling my best friend this much before." Jellybean hums mischievously. "Do you maybe want a napkin to wipe the drool off your chin?"

Well that confirms it then. Definitely a positive reaction.

Betty knows she should be creeped out by Jughead's staring. But she can no longer deny that there's something new stirring inside her, and a niggling voice in the depths of her brain keeps whispering that she'd wanted him to react like this. That she'd been thinking of him when she chose this outfit.

JB's sarcastic remark is enough to somehow snap Jughead out of his stupor and he turns to glare at his sister, before casting his now unhappy eyes back in Betty's direction.

"If you're coming to this party tonight then watch your back." he says darkly, before sharply jabbing a finger towards her chest. "And lose the top."

Betty is temporarily incensed and wants to appropriately reprimand Jughead for trying to slut-shame her. But the pointed look JB is silently shooting her is enough to see Betty hold her tongue. She scurries back to the bedroom and swaps the studded tank top for a more conservative long sleeved black tee with Guns n Roses emblazoned across the front. If she's entirely honest with herself, she feels comfortable now that she's wearing more fabric, and looks slightly more like herself (but she'd rather die than admit that to Jughead).

When they arrive at the soap factory (which is actually an abandoned warehouse on the border of Riverdale and Greendale) it's early but the party is already in full swing. Hundreds of young southsiders in various stages of inebriation roam the warehouse and parking lot looking for a good time. There's a DJ mixing electro house music and strobe lights have been fixed to the metal ceiling beams.

The Serpents, easily identifiable in their black snake jackets, are all hanging out at one end of the space. They're quiet, slow moving and glowering angrily at anyone who gets too close. They couldn't be less inviting if they tried, so Betty turns away from them.

To Betty's surprise she spies another large gang are congregating at the other end of the party. This second gang, though slightly less than the Serpents in numbers, is clearly much louder and more obnoxious. And they're all wearing silver studded gang paraphernalia.

Jughead's aversion to Betty's original attire suddenly makes a lot more sense. He hadn't been trying to strip her of her sexual agency, he'd merely been trying to disassociate her from his rival gang. Betty breathes a silent sigh of relief. Not that she even cares what Jughead thinks about her outfit anyway. Or at least that's what she keeps telling herself.

"Those are the Ghoulies." JB whispers, leaning in close to Betty's ear when she notices her staring. "They're from Greendale, but they like to edge Serpent territory and always start trouble."

Betty frowns, because she's never even heard of this other gang before and she definitely doesn't like the look of them. Some of the boys are clearly high off their faces and actually trying to slash each other with knives.  One idiot is even trying to shimmy up a thick metal post to reach the ceiling so he can lick the mirror ball. It all seems like rather pointless, brutish activity.

"They're wild boys." JB continues, passing over a beer (though Betty has no idea where it's come from) "The Serpents are a serious organization but the Ghoulies are just crazy. They deal the bullshit synthetic drugs that the Serpents won't touch and last year two of their members got arrested for bestiality with a goat."

In her shock, Betty chokes and spits a mouthful of beer onto the concrete floor. Jughead looks over his shoulder and throws her a disapproving scowl that she tries her hardest to ignore. He seems different here. In the artificially lit darkness, surrounded by southsiders and gang bangers, his hardened edges seem more pronounced somehow and he gives off a menacing vibe.

Betty silently decides it's smart if she just avoids the whole Ghoulies half of the warehouse. Not that the Serpent side is really much better. She has no desire to get involved in any gang related business of any kind. Of course she knows Jughead is a Serpent, as FP is some kind of leader (wherever he may currently be) but JB merely refers to herself as 'Serpent adjacent', which Betty takes to mean she's loosely aligned with the group but not a member of it. That's about as far as she hopes to ever associate with any of them or their illicit activity.

Nonetheless, Betty follows Jughead acutely with her eyes as he moves through the crowd, into the Serpent area and sits down with a dark haired boy. Even under the pyrotechnic lights, Betty recognizes him immediately. He's the mean one who tried to mug her back when she was a kid. The idea of even so much as even breathing the same air as that vagrant makes Betty feel sick, yet he and Jughead are laughing and bumping fists like they're the bestest of best buddies. And they probably are. Typical.

The hair on the back of Betty's neck stands on end as anxiety ripples through her body. She feels way out of her depth at this party. She should never have come. Not at the best of times and certainly not when her emotions are shot and her worries about money are at an all time high thanks to her crazy mother. She feels foolish.

She tightly grips JB's hand and means to pull her close enough to speak to her over the thrumming beat of the hypnotic music. Jellybean grins and allows herself to be reeled in.

"Jelly, I think I should just head ho- "

"Oh my gosh Betts, look!" Jellybean suddenly squeals, her strong grip turning Betty's knuckles bone white. "Over there! It's Andy! The guy I was telling you about on the phone last week!"

Betty follows JB's line of sight, and sure enough a clean shaven blonde boy about their age is making a beeline straight for them. He is looking at JB likes she's a snack (which she really is in her super cute black jeans and shimmering gold retro crop top) and he grins broadly when he catches her staring.

Andy has been the object of JB's affections for most of her senior year. Betty already knows enough about this guy that she could probably write a book about him. If not a novel, at least a novella.  A fellow Riverdale High student, he lives close enough to the border of the bad side of town to safely fraternize with southsiders. But Betty suspects he is attending this party merely to fraternize with one Jellybean Jones and the last thing she wants to do is stand in the way of true love.

"What were you saying, Betts?" JB asks, turning nervously back to her best friend.

"Don't try and change the subject. Go!" Betty laughs, shoving Jellybean dramatically into Andy's oncoming path. "I'll be fine here. You go!"

Betty watches JB and Andy fumble their way through some mildly awkward conversation, before the boy gingerly places his open palm on the small of JB's back and begins to lead her toward the makeshift dance floor.

Betty grins smugly as she watches them disappear, then sighs into her now empty beer as she realizes she's wound up alone. She isn't entirely sure how to get back to Sunnyside from the warehouse, and she is contemplating whether an Uber will venture this far into the bad side of town to collect her when someone touches her.

It's not that sweet, feather light, nervous hand that Andy had just placed at the base of JB's spine. It's more like an insistent grabbing. Calloused fingers winding tightly around her wrist, and tugging her towards the Serpents corner of the party. Betty grumbles, but recognizes her captor and allows herself to be physically shifted.

"Fuck my life." Jughead snarks as he weaves them through the swarm of partygoers. "I just knew Bean would run off with some boy and leave me on babysitting duty."

Betty can feel her cheeks burning, and not just from the beer now making it's way into her blood stream. She's tired and embarrassed and remembering exactly why she never went to many parties when she was growing up. In Riverdale she is an outsider, on both the northside and the southside. The weirdo little loner, as Jughead had so aptly once described her.

Besides, she isn't sure if this version of Jughead is someone she even wants to hang out with. He's certainly acting like her presence is an inconvenience. 

Jughead abruptly releases her arm and flops back down onto his original perch - a dusty looking fabric couch with nasty big rips in the arms. Betty is acutely aware that she's now standing deep inside Serpent territory, and several sets of eyes are looking at her expectantly. This is the last place she wants to be, and she certainly doesn't need Jughead lording it over her when she feels vulnerable.

"I don't need babysitting." she huffs. "I'm fine on my own."

"Sit down, Betts." Jughead scowls, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. "I won't tell you again."

"You're not the boss of me." she snaps back, hands unconsciously finding purchase on her hips as she looms over him. "Goodbye. I'm out of here."

"Sit down." Jughead commands in a deep voice, reaching out to grab her wrist again and physically dragging her onto the seat cushion beside him.

Several of the Serpents begin to laugh at the spectacle, and Betty feels hot tears stinging her eyes. She blinks them away, not willing to let these cold-hearted brutes see her cry. Instead, she focuses on her breathing - the way Chic taught her when she was small.

In for the count of six, hold for the count of seven, out for the count of eight. In for six, hold for seven, out for eight.

The pulsing music seems to fade dully into the background as Betty closes her eyes and concentrates on nothing but the rise and fall of her own chest. Unable to see him coming, she doesn't notice Jughead leaning in close to her and she jumps when she feels his lips tickling the soft, sensitive skin near her right ear.

"Sorry." he mumbles, and she realizes he's so close she can actually smell the faint scent of alcohol on his breath. "I didn't mean to yell or whatever. It's just not safe for someone like you to wander around a place like this on your own."

This is probably the first time in thirteen years that Jughead has actually apologized for anything, but of course Betty's spiraling mind latches onto the negative in his words instead of the positive.

"Someone like me?" she sniffs crankily. "You mean some stupid northside girl?"

"No." Jughead says lowly. "I mean a girl as pretty as you."

The heat pooling in Betty's stomach is no longer just a result of the beer mixing with the two shots JB forced her to do before they left the trailer. Jughead Jones has just told her she's pretty and she isn't grotesquely repulsed. She can no longer pretend that there's nothing seismic shifting between them and the way they relate to each other. It's new and completely unexpected, but certainly a welcome distraction to the other bullshit in her life.

Before Betty's brain even has a chance to process a response to his statement, he's gone again - leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. It puts his back to Betty, effectively closing her out of any conversations he may be having with his fellow gang members.

Betty is...mad.

What kind of jerk tells a girl she's attractive then immediately just ignores her? Jughead Jones, that's who. She isn't sure if it's some kind of deliberate tactic to reel in her interest (what did Veronica once call it? Oh yes - negging) or if he's just truly that much of an asshat.

Determined not to be bested, she leans forward to match and starts picking up chatter in the group. There's four of them in total, including Jughead. Betty wonders if there's some kind of specific criteria to become part of the Serpents, because all these boys are physically quite similar - tall, broad and dark haired.

Dark haired boy number one is talking when Betty sits forward in her chair, and he briefly glances at her but otherwise pays her no attention. "You want a Lamborghini to be big and noisy. They're Italian beasts. The v12 engine is like sex on wheels." 

Okay so they're discussing cars. Unexpected, but not completely bizarre. Given the Serpents' propensity to sometimes engage in a little casual grand theft auto, and Jughead's work at the auto shop, it makes sense that they recreationally consider the pros and cons sports cars. Maybe to steal them, maybe to race them, maybe just for fun.

Dark haired boy number two shakes his head and interjects loudly. "Fangs if you're only considering the engine cylinders, sure the Aventador is a v12 but Bugatti has a v16 in their Veyron. I just don't think the Aventador is the best car of all time, that's all."

Sending a silent thank you to Hal Cooper for teaching her everything he knew about cars and engines, Betty clears her throat and opens her mouth before her nerves get the better of her.

"The Aventador isn't the best car of all time. It isn't even the best Lamborghini on the market." she says, immediately drawing the attention of all four Serpents. "The Huracan is only a v10, but it's outstanding on fuel consumption and the throttle is ultra sharp. It's my pick any day of the week."

There's a prolonged silence. Then Jughead sighs and leans back far enough in his chair to allow Betty access to the conversation. He uncrosses his arms and places an unassuming hand on her knee.

"Uh. Guys, this is Betty." he grumbles uncomfortably. "JB's friend from California."

Betty's eyes widen at that frankly odd introduction. She wants to brusquely inform him that she's actually lived in Riverdale a lot longer than he has (having been born here and lived virtually all her life on Elm Street), but there's a strange look in his eye as he glances at her. It's enough to halt the words in her mouth and they die in the back of her throat.

"Betty this is Fangs," he says, indicating towards dark haired boy number one. "And this is Joaquin." he says, nodding his head to dark haired boy number two. "And over there is my best friend, Sweet Pea."

Betty looks up and over at dark haired boy number three (who ironically enough has a name even stupider than Jughead), her eyes narrowing in mistrust. He's the one who'd attacked her nine years ago. Of course he's Jughead's best friend now. She wonders if Sweet Pea recognizes her, or if Jughead even recalls the incident at all.

"So you're JB's friend?" Sweet Pea asks, and whilst he appears friendly enough his smile comes across as a slimy smirk. "Where exactly is JB tonight?"

"She's around here someplace." Betty shrugs, suddenly wilting under his intrusive stare. It's almost as if Sweet Pea's eyes are stripping back the layers of her soul to reveal her deep, dark secrets. "She'll be back really soon."

"And in the meantime, she's hanging out with me." Jughead interjects helpfully. "Right, Betts?"

"Um, yes." Betty nods, suddenly grateful for his presence.

Jughead seems to sense her sudden uneasiness and squeezes her knee before swapping out her empty beer can for his own (which Betty notes is still nearly full). After a couple of minutes, he leans back fully so that he is resting up against the couch cushions and tosses the length of his arm casually across the head rest. Almost on auto-pilot, Betty tucks herself into his side.

They stay that way for quite a while. Jughead chats casually with his friends without attempting to involve her further. He doesn't glance in her direction nor does he speak to her. But she can tell he's subversively paying attention because when she finishes off the second beer and leans forward to place the can on the concrete floor of the warehouse, the arm that’s still resting up against the couch slides forward to wrap around her shoulder and draw her back into the curve of his torso.

Fangs disappears for a few minutes, and when he returns he is clutching five more beer cans (stacked carefully in both is hands). He passes them around to the boys, and Betty is more than a little surprised when she realizes that he's brought a drink back for her as well. It's thoughtful, and Betty feels both thrilled and nervous that she has been included in such a way.

Betty isn't exactly a lightweight, nor is she a big drinker. The pre-drinks plus the beers is enough to create a suitable buzz and send weird tingles down her extremities. She wonders if she’ll feel even more drunk if she attempts to stand, though at this particular juncture of the evening she has no desire to be anywhere else except sitting next to Jughead.

She is certainly at a loss to define exactly what is going on between them. She's now ninety-five percent sure she's into him (having obviously experienced some red-hot instant attraction at the mere sight of him the previous day) and she's eighty percent convinced he's fully reciprocating. She knows she should be weirded out by this turn of events. But she also knows that the thing about Jughead is their relationship with one another is quite undefined.

On the one hand, they have so much shared history. As children they spent years seeing each other literally each and every day. That should be enough to make these feelings rapidly developing in her amygdala mostly inappropriate.

But as teenagers and now as adults, they are virtually strangers. They went years between seeing each other, never really getting past their petty hatred. Of course they're linked intrinsically through JB, who loves them both like family, and she suspects he would probably always have come to her rescue if he thought she was going to, like, drown in Sweetwater River or fall off a cliff. But apart from the present moment he's never given any indication he can even so much as tolerate her existence.

After a while, she feels the alcohol settle uncomfortably in her bladder and decides to go in search of a restroom. She is pleasantly surprised to see she is steady on her feet and holding her liquor quite nicely.

Jughead turns sharply as he feels her moving off the couch and scowls at her. "Where do you think you're going now?"

"To pee." she scowls back. "Is that okay?"

Jughead rolls his eyes and then shakes his head at the boys. "Ugh. I'll be back in a few. Gotta play babysitter again."

"I hope JB is paying you by the hour for your services, man." Sweet Pea laughs. "This babysitting gig looks like a drag."

Betty momentarily considers telling Sweet Pea that _he's_ the one who looks like a drag, but mentally recoils from the idea when they make brief eye contact and she sees the coldness in his gaze. Instead, she focuses on the sensation of Jughead intertwining their fingers as he leads her through the crowd and to the back of the warehouse.

There's a dimly lit and mostly deserted corridor that leads to a bathroom and seems buffered from the noise of the rest of the party. Away from the rhythmic thumping of the music Betty finally finds herself able to think.

"So your friends are a total hoot." she sniggers, realizing in that moment she's perhaps more inebriated than she originally thought she was. "I especially like the one who tried to assault me back when I was in middle school. Nice boy, that one."

Jughead stops suddenly and jerks on her hand, pulling her completely flush up against him and bringing his other hand to rest on her hip. Betty's whole body is flooded with anticipation, but then she notices the somber look on his face and simply frowns up at him.

"Hey, listen to me. Sweet Pea has done some bad things, but he's got my back." he says darkly. "When my life is on the line, I trust him to protect me. But that doesn't mean you should trust him. Stay on your guard when he's around. Understand?"

Betty snorts and then giggles at his seriousness. "No, Juggie. I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."

Jughead rolls his eyes but then can't stop himself from mimicking her light-hearted laugh. "Okay Drunkie, never mind. We'll raincheck on this conversation for when you're sober. Let's just get you to the bathroom."

He drags her down the hall again and playfully shoves her towards the bathroom door, but she stops and smirks at him over her shoulder. "You were never this nice to me when we were kids." she dares to say.

"Well you were never this pretty." he responds with a casual shrug. "Also, you were like eight."

Betty's face flushes as she disappears inside the restroom. There was that word again. Pretty. 

Jughead Jones thinks Betty Cooper is pretty.

And Betty Cooper likes it.

She manages to lock herself in a vacant stall and fumbles with the zipper on her skirt for a while, then stupidly remembers she can just lift the garment to sit on the toilet. As she struggles to seat herself without wobbling she recognizes that one more drink is going to push her over the edge from pleasantly buzzing to properly wasted (and it's definitely not fault of the three beers - damn JB and her Alabama Slammer shots).

Once she is finished, she is busy waving her hands under the restroom dryer trying to figure out how to activate the damn motion sensor when she hears Jughead's voice out in the corridor.

"Do my eyes deceive me or is Toni Topaz at this party?"

Even with drinks in her system, Betty knows she shouldn't eavesdrop on other people's conversations. But he sounds so different. He sounds perky. She's never heard him so chirpy before.

"My my! Jughead Jones." gushes a decidedly feminine voice. "Long time no see."

A girl? It's a girl.

Betty curses and yanks her hands away from the machine; lest she actually manage to turn it on and muffle the sounds of their suddenly intriguing tête-à-tête.

"I've been away working a job down in Virginia. It took a couple of weeks. Why, Jones? You miss me?" the girl croons.

"I always miss you, Topaz." Jughead replies smoothly, without missing a beat. "What kind of stuff does the new Serpent King have you working on? Drugs? Guns?"

Betty's stomach clenches uncomfortably at the easy way Jughead works illegal gang related activity into the dialogue. Like black market shipments of firearms or class A narcotics are just common topics of discussion around these parts. Which, really, they probably are. 

"Little from column A, little from column B. It's been a wild ride, that's for sure." Toni says, before her tone of voice changes completely. "Speaking of rides, who's the skanky little blonde that's been draped all over you all evening? Your new flavor of the month?"

Betty finds herself instantly aghast by the words this obviously unpleasant bitch has spoken whilst simultaneously fascinated by what Jughead's response may be.

"Nothing at all like that." Jughead says, sounding mortified. "She's a friend of Bean's from California. You know how it is - if I leave her on her own here, she'll get eaten alive by the vultures."

Toni laughs a little too enthusiastically. "Oh come on. I know you're into blondes. You're not even going to just use her for a sneaky roll in the hay?"

Betty can feel the beer flavored bile rising in her throat. Hot, salty tears threatening to spill from her hooded eyes. She knows she isn't drunk enough for this exchange on the other side of the bathroom door to be hallucinated or even misconstrued.

To Betty's horror, she can hear Jughead laughing too. "Hell no. She's such a stuck-up little thing. I imagine the sex would be ultra bland so I'll take a hard pass on that one."

At this, Betty actually leans forward into the sink and retches. By some miracle, the contents of her stomach manage to stay where it's supposed to be, but she can't prevent the tears from rolling down her cheeks and collecting at the crease of her jaw.

She feels utterly stupid. For everything. For trusting her mother to do right by her. For putting herself into a position where she can be stripped of every cent of her money. For letting people walk all over her. For the siblings who weren't there for her when she needed them. For trying so hard for so long to be so strong.

For letting herself think that someone cool and suave like Jughead Jones could actually _not_ act like a jerk for once. That he was flirting with her. That he was interested. Interested in someone like her.

This time she really, truly just wants to go home. Not that she has a home to go to anymore. Nor does she even have enough funds to go and stay in a cheap motel until Chic's money comes through.

What she also wants, more than anything, is to leave the party without having to look Jughead Jones in the eye.

As a loud gaggle of girls come bursting into the restroom, squealing and talking, Betty takes her chance to slip out the door undetected. As she tiptoes off down the corridor, she glances back over her shoulder and spies Jughead leaning casually up against the wall still talking to this Toni girl.

And of course she's simply stunning. Petite with an amazing body, long flowing hair streaked with pink and a sexy grunge vibe. She's exactly the kind of girl Jughead should be with. Maybe they’re even together already.

Betty pushes her way through the warehouse and makes it all the way outside into the parking lot. She's almost at the road and rapidly panicking about where she's actually planning to go when someone calls out to her.

"Hey! Girl with the sad eyes! Come over here. I want to talk to you."

It's not at all lost on Betty how pathetic it truly is that she recognizes this drunk white male is talking to her, having used her _sadness_ as an identifier. She whirls back around and comes face to face with him.

He's not wearing any gang colors, but he's definitely a southsider - tattoos on both arms, a scruffy beard and scuffed black boots.

"What do you want?" Betty scowls, hopping from one foot to the other and trying not to let her nerves show.

"I have a cure for your sadness." he says with a sly wink.

"Is it a penis?" she sighs annoyedly. "It's a penis, isn't it? No thanks."

"If by penis you mean an entire keg of home brewed moonshine guaranteed to turn that frown of yours upside down." he hollers loudly, drawing several _whoop whoops_ from his equally bottom dwelling friends standing nearby.

Betty wants to say no. She wants to tell this moron to take a long walk off a short pier. But she also knows she's suitably buzzed and if she drinks just a little more, she may actually be able to forget about her meaningless fucked up life, at least for the remainder of the evening.

And right now, truly nothing sounds more glorious. 

"Okay,” she finally says. ”Bring it on then."  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! My goal with this fic is to depict the Serpents as we saw them in earlier seasons of Riverdale (violent, angry, drug dealing thugs) rather than the fluffy babies we're seeing in season 3 who hug it out and cry when they accidentally kill people. So this means I have to make some of the Serpents just a bit mean over the next few chapters. I'm also trying to show a human side of Betty dealing with the traumatic events of her young life by making poor choices (hence the binge drinking) but she'll be okay so stick with me here. Let me know what you think and I look forward to posting chapter 3 in a few days!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi readers! Thank you so much to those of you who are following along with this fic. I'm so appreciative of the comments and kudos I have received. I know I'm a little later than I'd hoped posting this third update but in my defence it's 11,500 thousand words so I think I've potentially made up for the tardiness haha. Warning - there's a very light amount of smut at the end of this chapter. And when I say light I'm going to suggest it's not even PG13 and you've definitely seen worse on the show itself (pretty much any scene involving Veronica in sexy lingerie haha).

The keg is already tapped, and Betty briefly considers the fact it may be spiked with something other than high-proof distilled spirits, but at this point she isn't entirely sure she even cares what happens to her. 

The liquid both smells and tastes like turpentine (or at least what Betty imagines turpentine must taste like) and it burns her throat as she swallows. She downs the entire red cup full in one go and then immediately asks for another.

The alcohol hits her blood stream with potent speed and when she staggers away from the group of southside boys, she is barely able to keep herself upright.

"Come back, Sad Girl. Have another drink with us." the instigator begs. "Let's have some fun."

"No." she calls over her shoulder, stumbling aimlessly back towards the warehouse. "Leave me alone."

There are indignant shouts of protest but thankfully nobody attempts to follow her inside. The darkness of the soap factory seems to veritably swallow her up, and she disappears into the thrumming abyss of the party.

It’s somehow louder and brighter inside the confines of the warehouse than she remembers. The thumping techno music reverberates uncomfortably in Betty’s brain and the laser lights sting her eyes, so she keeps her head down.

It's only when she finally looks up, squinting through the blur, that she realizes she has inadvertently stumbled right into Ghoulies territory. The flashing of the strobe lights causes a disorienting stop motion effect as she watches the crazed Ghoulies shifting around her in a discombobulated way and Betty quickly falls victim to flicker vertigo.  

Gasping in panic and blinking rapidly, she starts to back-track but stumbles into a faceless body in the crowd. Too drunk to steady herself, she hits the floor with an awkward thud and finds herself unable to get back up.

Two of the Ghoulies creeps finally notice her then, and begin to descend upon her. Determined not to fall prey to whatever insane shit they may attempt, Betty crawls on her hands and knees through strangers' legs and across the sticky dance floor in the opposite direction.

Eventually, she decides she is far enough away to consider herself safe from the Ghoulies. She unceremoniously collapses against a nearby wall, not far from the corridor that leads to the restrooms. She wonders briefly if Jughead is still down there with the gorgeous emo Serpents girl. Or maybe they’ve already gone home – _together._  

Betty groans and clutches at her head. If at all possible, she is still becoming drunker by the second. In an attempt to prevent the giddy nausea, she tips her head back until it rests on the cool brick behind her then closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she feels like perhaps a period of time _may_ have passed.

She isn't sure exactly where she is or how she came to be there, but the room is spinning dangerously. It’s dark, there’s loud party music, horny young people grinding up against each other...a frat party, maybe? No, that doesn’t seem right. This doesn’t look like anywhere she’s even been in California. This place seems more like a giant warehouse. 

Suddenly Betty realizes what has awoken her - there's a figure standing over her and reaching down to shake her roughly. Long dark hair, tinged with purple. An oddly familiar face. The shadows shift inexplicably, and Betty realizes she’s looking at a girl. A frantic girl. A girl who is reaching into her pocket and pulling out a cell phone.

"Juggie I've found her. Near the back corridor. She's not in good shape. You'd better come quickly." 

Betty frowns and let's out a frustrated moan, before tucking herself further back against the wall and closing her eyes again.

The next time she looks, there's a boy crouching beside her. She gasps at his unexpected presence and pulls back in fright, but he is gently cupping both her cheeks with his hands.

"Jesus fucking Christ." he growls, and for some reason there's a hint of panic in his voice. "Can you hear me, Betts? Hey Betts. Come on, just open your eyes for me."

Betty doesn’t know exactly what his issue is, because her eyes are clearly open and she is clearly looking right at him.

The boy turns to glance anxiously behind him. “Her eyelids are so heavy I can’t even tell if she’s conscious. What do we do?”

Oh. The girl with the dark hair is still there, hovering behind the boy.

"Do you think she's taken drugs?” she asks. “Or her drink was spiked? She looks really sick."

Suddenly there's a phone flashlight shining uncomfortably close to her face and Betty reaches up blindly to try and shove it away.

"Her pupils aren't dilated." he announces, as if this is somehow newsworthy.  

He puts his hands on her face again, pushing her sweat slicked hair away from her forehead.

"No fever either." he says then. "I think she's just totally wasted. Fuck, Bean! How could you let this happen?"

"Me?" the girl snaps back. "You were the one with her when she disappeared. You should have taken care of her."

The boy stands up then, face to face with the angry brunette. "Are you deluded? She should never have been here in the first place! I told you she didn't belong here. Girls like Betty don't belong at southside parties. Why don't you ever listen to me?"

Through intense mental confusion, Betty finally recognizes that these two angry humans in the loud, dark room are discussing her. She shakes her head, as if to rid herself of their presence, but she only manages to make herself feel woozy.

"Leave me alone. Stay away from me." she finally says, and they both turn sharply to gawk at her.

She has made herself clear in her directions, yet neither of them make a move to walk away.

"What did she just say?" the girl frowns. "I literally didn't understand a single word of that slurred mess."

"She's fucking wrecked. We need to get her out of here." the male says.

Betty doesn’t actually remember falling asleep again, but the next time she opens her eyes she's in a moving vehicle. She's wedged on a bench seat in an old pick-up truck. She recognizes her companions now and vaguely identifies that Jellybean is propping her up, and Jughead is behind the wheel.

"Why would she even do this? It's so out of character for her to behave this stupidly." Jughead is scowling. "So immature. So wreckless. I’m so mad."

"Cut her some slack, Jug." JB huffs back. "With everything going on with her life at the moment I'm not surprised she's ended up messy drunk."

"What do you mean? What's going on?" Jughead implores forcefully.

Betty isn't exactly coherent enough to talk, but she really wants to tell JB to keep her mouth shut. Jughead Jones doesn't need to know a thing about Betty's personal life.

She tries to interject, but ends up just making a strangled moaning sound before collapsing back against JB's shoulder.

The next time Betty wakes up, she's back at the trailer. They're all in the small living room, but Betty isn't standing on her feet. Jughead is cradling her in his arms, one hand under the back of her knees and the other carefully hooked behind her neck.

"Because I'm working the breakfast shift, Jughead! I need to get a few hours sleep. That's why!" JB shouts.

"So you just expect me to take care of _your_ drunk best friend while you go off to bed?" Jughead hisses angrily, though his hold on Betty is gentle. "This is bullshit, Bean. Don't make this my responsibility. I'm not doing it. I'm not. I won't. No way. No. Nope. No."

Betty opens her eyes again and she's tucked up in a bed. She doesn't recognize the lines of the room, which is bathed in the soft light emanating from a lamp on the night stand. But she doesn't necessarily feel unsafe, either. The smell of this space is somehow comforting and familiar.

The mental confusion has disappeared, though the brain fog remains alongside a heavy sinking feeling in the pit of Betty’s stomach. She pushes back the covers and goes to sit up a little, but she's immediately assaulted by a forceful bout of queasy sickness and grabs at her tummy.

It's only when Jughead rushes forward and kneels beside the mattress that she realizes she's in his bedroom and he'd been sitting in the corner watching over her. One of his hands reaches out to stabilize her and the other is holding an old green bucket.

"Oh God I feel awful." Betty moans, taking a big gasping breath as another wave of nausea washes over her.

Jughead shifts away a little in order to pluck a bottle of water from the night stand. "Here, Betts. Drink some of this." he coaxes gently.

A single mouthful barely passes down the back of Betty's throat before she retches violently. Jughead's reaction speed is tantamount to a Marvel superhero as he swings the bucket underneath her chin just in time for her to heave into it.

It's definitely not a ladylike, dainty little upchuck. It's the forceful kind of vomit that's intense enough to come streaming out of both her mouth and nose. She chokes and coughs as it burns her lips and throat.

Once Jughead is certain the vomiting has stopped (at least for now) he leaves her to sip at her water and takes the bucket across the hall into the bathroom. When he comes back the bucket has been washed clean and he's also brought a damp cloth which he uses to sponge Betty's face and freshen her up as best he can.

Betty is mortified and guilt ridden and immediately begins to cry. Jughead Jones cleaning up her vomit is definitely _not_ high on Betty's life goal list (though if it was, at least she could now check it off).

"I'm so sorry, Jughead." she sobs, covering her face with her hands to hide her embarrassment. "I'm so sorry."

"Shshsh Betts, it's okay." he whispers, carefully easing her head back down onto the pillow. "Try to get some more rest, okay? I'll be right here if you need me."

The next time Betty opens her eyes, sunbeams are streaming into the room through the half drawn threadbare brown curtains. She sits up fully, relieved that the nausea has dissipated, and reaches for her bottle of water again.

Only then does she notice the two small white pills on the nightstand, with a handwritten note scrawled sloppily in blue pen ink 'for your inevitable headache'. She snatches them up and quickly swallows them.

Glancing down, she also notices that she's now dressed in an oversized black tee and cotton sleep shorts. She has entirely no memory of placing these clothes on her body, so she wonders how they came to be there. Her hair is piled on top of her head in a messy bun and she can feel just by touching her eyelashes that she's no longer wearing any makeup.

Curiosity gets the better of her as she stands on shaky legs, using the back of her right hand to shield her sore eyes from the harsh light of day, and staggers out into the living room of the trailer.

Jughead is sprawled casually across the couch, legs crossed at the ankles, reading a book. He glances in her direction as she approaches, and then swings his feet down onto the floor in order to make room for her on the seat next to him. He smirks as she flops down onto the cushions with a loud groan.

"How are you feeling, slugger?" he asks, his face amused but his eyes serious.

"I hurt." she mumbles gruffly, avoiding eye contact.

For some reason all her muscles are aching. Particularly her abdominal muscles. Not to mention the thumping in her head. She's been hungover once or twice before in her lifetime, but never quite as badly as this.

"I'll bet." he replies smartly. "That southside moonshine is no joke. I'm surprised you didn't end up with alcohol poisoning."

He rises to his feet and heads into the small kitchen. She can see him through the kitchen pass through and watches him closely as he opens the fridge and begins rifling through it.

 "How do you know about that?" she frowns, a hazy memory entering her mind.

Jughead definitely hadn't been there when she drank the moonshine. He was...somewhere else? Perhaps still inside the warehouse. Her brain pushes the briefest hint of pink hair into her mind's eye but she has no idea what it means.

"Because you told me." he chuckles. "About 3am this morning, while your face was in the toilet bowl and I was holding your hair out of the way of your vomit."

He turns back towards the benchtop and starts buttering slices of bread in a super nonchalant way. Almost like he hasn't just dropped the world's most horrifying information on her.

She has absolutely no memory of this occurring, and it suddenly makes her worry that she could have told this jerk _any_ possible thing about herself or even worse - how attractive she finds him.

"You did what?" she gasps, her face falling into her open palms in an act of devastation. "Oh God. I'm never drinking ever again."  

Jughead rinses his hands under the faucet, dries them on his pants then shuffles back out into the living room with a sandwich on a plate. He places it deftly on the coffee table in front of her and then sinks back into the seat cushions.

He makes no move to reach forward and take the sandwich, nor to eat it, but Betty isn't wholly convinced it's for her (because Jughead Jones is notorious for not sharing his precious food with literally anybody) so it just sits there untouched.

"Hey Betts," he says quietly, his eyes on the blank, black television screen across the room. "How come you didn't tell me about your mother?"

Betty bristles immediately and adjusts her posture to sit more upright. The fog clears enough from her brain to recall perhaps JB blurting out her secrets in the car on the way home from the party the previous evening.

"Why would I?" she snaps, perturbed. "Just so you could make fun of me?"

"So that's what you think of me? That I'd do that to you?" he scowls. "For starters you could have stopped me from making all those super inappropriate comments on Thursday - about me sleeping with your mom. Or you could have corrected me when I insinuated your life was perfect."

"You didn't insinuate, you directly stated as such." Betty replies heatedly. "I think the exact word you used was idyllic."

Jughead looks ashamed and says nothing, simply shaking his head at his own behavior.

"Well now you know the truth." she continues. "My life isn't idyllic. It's the opposite. I'm completely broke and everything I owned is gone and my siblings don't care and to make matters worse I'm basically an orphan. So mock me for that next time you're looking for some fodder, okay?"

"Betty. Stop." he says desperately. "I'm not going to mock you, okay? Fuck. I can help you. I've got connections in the gang. I may be able to actually track down your crazy bitch of a mother."

Betty sighs and lets her head tip behind her until it hits the back of the couch. From this angle all she can see is the white flaking ceiling paint, but it helps to alleviate the pounding in her brain. Jughead's words swirl around her on an endless circuit, like there's something more to them. Like perhaps there's a hidden meaning to be found. Then suddenly the answer appears at the forefront of her mind.

His gang connections.

His gang.

The girl in the hallway.

His biting words.

_She's such a stuck-up little thing. The sex would be super bland._

Betty gasps and sits forward again, but before she can open her mouth to admonish him or tell him to go to hell or whatever it is she thinks she may want to say, he beats her to it.

"Honestly Betty I feel so bad." he moans. "In light of everything going on in your life, I feel like I was probably taking advantage of your vulnerability last night."

"Huh?" she frowns, not entirely sure what he's talking about. "With what?"

For a terrible second Betty wonders if she is wearing different clothes because Jughead had sex with her while she was black-out drunk. But no sooner has she thought it, she is dismissing it as completely impossible. He’s a pig, but he’s not _that_ guy. Never has been and never will be.

"I don't know. Flirting with you, maybe?" he replies, rubbing the back of his neck nervously with the palm of his hand. "I don't know what came over me. We haven't even seen each other in a while and I was a little overcome with emotion. It was wrong of me."

Well, great. Now he's apologizing for _flirting_. Or at the very least he’s retracting the flirting. So not only does he think she's a useless little snob, he also now regrets the possibly two or three nice things he's ever said to her. Just perfect.

"I'm sorry. For everything. That's what I'm trying to say." he continues awkwardly, when her lack of response starts to create an uncomfortable silence. "Here, just eat your sandwich. It'll make your hangover a little less severe."

Jughead reaches for the plate and slowly holds it out for her to take. But Betty looks down at the peanut butter and jelly wedged between two slices of bread like he's showing her a severed head on a platter.

He's trying to be nice to her. She can see that he is. He's offering her food that he's gone to the trouble of preparing with his own two hands. He's concerned for her - worried that he upset her with his 'flirting' and agitated on her behalf at her mother's behavior. But all she can think about now is the way he spoke about her behind her back when he thought she wasn't listening.

Betty, almost on autopilot, picks up the sandwich and raises it to her lips. Slowly and deliberately she takes a large bite, masticating for a prolonged and awkward amount of time before heavily swallowing.

"Good?" he asks hopefully, eyebrows raised in anticipation.

Betty places the food back on the coffee table, stands up and then shrugs noncommittally.

"It was okay." she replies coldly. "Too _bland_ for my taste, though."

The color immediately drains from Jughead’s face when she drops the noxious word. He definitely knows. He knows that she knows. He knows that she overheard him tell the sexy biker babe that Betty is stuck-up, vanilla and he’d basically rather die than touch her.

And his facial expression is completely unreadable.

Betty angrily narrows her eyes at him then heads down the hall to JB's room. She feels childish slamming the door behind her, but it's also at least a little cathartic.

A few moments later she hears angry shuffling in the trailer (she can tell it’s angry because there’s lots of banging and stamping), then footsteps, followed the front door slamming equally as loudly as the bedroom door had moments earlier.

The sound of Jughead's motorcycle revving alerts Betty to the fact he's properly left the residence and she's home alone. She sighs and folds herself into the foetal position on the mattress. The sheets are cold and foreign, because she had slumbered elsewhere the previous evening.

Somewhere warm and safe. With him.

Shuddering, she tries to piece together every memory she can from the party. With absolute clarity she can recall Jughead touching her so sweetly and telling her that she’s pretty. So why then had he betrayed her in such a vicious way and said such mean things? She doesn’t understand the game he’s playing nor does she want any part of it.

Sighing again, she heads back out into the living room in search of her phone. She finds it on the coffee table, lined up neatly alongside her purse, and switches it on.

The first thing she sees is a text from JB reminding Betty that she’s working the morning shift at Pops and inviting her to come on down for breakfast on the off chance she wakes feeling more like a human and less like a zombie. Betty smiles at that.

The second is a notification that a Mr C. Cooper has transferred two hundred dollars to her Venmo wallet. Betty is instantly grateful for her brother’s help. She knows she will need to contribute somewhat to the bills at the trailer (particularly if she plans to stick around town for a while to find out if her mom shows her face) and she also knows she can stretch this amount of money for a couple of weeks if she’s savvy enough.

But then Betty thinks about it more and her gratitude suddenly morphs into anger. Chic has a ridiculously high paid executive job in Silicon Valley, all thanks to the education paid for exclusively by the bank of Mom and Dad Cooper.

She knows for a fact that Chic and his wife basically have more money than they know what to sensibly do with. They’re the type of people who drop thousands of dollars on tickets to charity galas just to be seen, not because they give a damn about charity. Just two weeks ago Barbara had posted photos on Facebook of a fun filled luxury getaway in Bora Bora, and the week before that she’d uploaded not one but _fourteen_ images of her new Birkin bag (Betty’s personal favorites being the images of Barb actually posing with the bag out by her pool like some kind of mentally challenged Zoolander model).

Perhaps it’s Betty’s hangover, or her anger over Jughead is misdirecting itself, but suddenly her blood is boiling. Two hundred dollars? Two hundred lousy dollars? She’s in a time of utter crisis and all he can spare her is two hundred dollars? Is that all she’s worth to the brother who she has spent most of her life practically hero worshipping?

“That jerk. He probably earns two hundred dollars an hour.” she scoffs out loud, tossing her phone back onto the table with contempt.

She knows she’s acting selfish and entitled, but she also knows without a shadow of a doubt that if one of her siblings was in trouble she would willingly give them the very shirt off her back if she thought it would help them. Instead, she has a sister who is too busy spelunking in Central America to even return her calls and a wealthy brother who is resentful that she’s even asked him for help at all.

The truth hurts more than Betty can even express; this realization that none of her family are really her family at all. Her family has irrevocably fallen apart and the strongest will on Earth can’t piece it back together.

Betty quickly decides the best course of action is _not_ to sit around in this dank trailer in Sunnyside, lest she allow her mind to spiral into an impalpable quagmire where all the people she cares about somehow let her down when she needs them most.

Instead, she drags her sorry self into the shower and allows the pleasant water to wash over her sore muscles and calm her pounding headache, at least for the entire seven minutes the water remains hot.

She dresses in a pair of faded blue skinny jeans and a bubblegum pink sweater, and lightly layers concealer and powder over her face to hide the signs of her blow out inebriation the night before. She brushes out her knotted hair and lets it cascade around her shoulders, then immediately changes her mind and sweeps it up into one of her old no-nonsense ponytails. She completes the boring look with her trademark squeaky clean white keds.

There. A very bland Betty Cooper outfit, she thinks, for a very bland Betty Cooper.

On a more positive note, the walk to Pops in the temperate weather does her hangover good and she can actually manage a genuine smile when she enters the diner and JB comes rushing over to envelope her in a fierce bear hug.

“Girlfriend I love you but you’re completely nuts.” she declares. “What _was_ that last night? You were so wasted it was practically like that airplane scene from Bridesmaids.”  

Betty rolls her eyes. “It wasn’t that bad.”

At least she hopes it wasn’t. She still can’t exactly remember the whole thing.

“It really _was_ that bad.” JB affirms emphatically. “I got out of bed at 4am to use the bathroom and I could hear you giggling uncontrollably in Juggie’s room and asking him what his hair tastes like.”

Betty gasps and immediately sinks down into the closest booth. This is it. This is the moment she actually dies from mortification. She has lost every last shred of dignity and has formally ceased to be alive.

 Jellybean, sensing that her best friend perhaps needs a pick-me-up, fills a cup with black coffee and places it gingerly on the tabletop. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Jughead won’t care.”

“I will never live this down.” Betty moans in horror, her face buried deep in her hands.

“Jughead thought it was funny.” JB shrugs. “I could hear him laughing and telling you that he thinks you’re cute when you’re drunk. It was sweet.”

Betty scowls at that little snippet of information. “Trust me. He doesn’t think I’m cute – drunk or otherwise.”

“Oh but he does.” JB smirks. “I always knew you two would end up together. It’s crazy how alike you both actually are.”

Betty tries hard to temper her emotions, though she has great difficulty. She and Jughead couldn’t be less alike if they tried. Jughead is a gang member, a felon, a thug, a _liar_. Betty is a top student at Stanford who loves puppies and rainbows and hot chocolate with marshmallows and…other nice, happy things.

Okay, so perhaps she’s generalizing. Perhaps he was kind enough to take care of her when she was drunk and sick. But that doesn’t make them alike. And it doesn’t make Jughead any less of a player.

“Alike?” Betty chokes. “We’re total opposites.”

JB slides into the booth across from Betty, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “What’s with the push back? Did you two have a lovers quarrel or something?”

“We are _not_ lovers.” Betty interjects hastily. “God. Can we drop this please? I don’t want to talk about your brother.”

“Fine, fine.” JB huffs, climbing back out of the booth. “What do you want for breakfast? I get off at eleven and then we can go a-huntin’ for Mama Coop.”

Betty orders the pancakes, with a side of ice cream (because maple syrup just reminds her of high school tormenter Cheryl Blossom) and as soon as the heavy carbs hit her stomach she feels more settled and less like she wants to crawl into a hole and die.

By the time JB finishes her shift, the headache has subsided from behind Betty’s eyes and the coffee in her blood stream has given her a whole new lease on life.

They take JB’s pick-up truck (as Betty has taken to calling it - because it’s not like FP is around to use it anymore) and start hitting locations on Betty’s handwritten list of places where Alice may be living ‘off grid’ with her creepy boyfriend.  

The first place they search is the clearing down near Sweetwater. There are a few isolated cabins peppered along the banks of the river, so the girls hike down the trail that cuts across the high point of the valley, where they can get a better vantage point.

As they walk, JB fills Betty in on her exciting evening with Andy the stud muffin. She gushes about how he’d confessed that he _like likes_ her, held her hand and even kissed her right on the mouth (“Right on the mouth, Betty!”). Andy had promised to call JB sometime over the weekend and invite her out on a real, actual date.

Betty is so pleased for her best friend, who has been almost comically unlucky in love all throughout the duration of her high school years. At the same time she tries to swallow down the bitterness rising in her throat, and forces away thoughts of Jughead and sensual biker girls who are anything but bland.

Betty once again wonders if Jughead would have gone home with that Toni girl, had she not ended up embarrassingly drunk on the floor and requiring ‘babysitting’, as Jughead had so sweetly put it. She vigorously shakes her head, as if trying to rid her mind of the burdensome mental imagery, but can’t shake the feeling that _she_ wishes she could kiss Jughead right on the mouth. She quietly hates herself for still feeling that way, even in spite of everything.

The trip out to the river cabins ends up entirely fruitless, as it’s obvious none have been inhabited for a lengthy period of time. The midday sun beats down on Betty, leaving her coated in a sheen of sweat, as they trudge back to the truck. She very seriously considers calling it a day and heading back to the trailer to sleep off her newly returned bad mood.  

But JB is almost unpleasantly chipper and insists they try a few more locations. They head north and drive the roads that lead up to Orange County, where the state parks could definitely conceal a couple of hippies living off grid.

Finding nothing but grass and trees (and the occasional duck), they stop off for a late lunch at a little pizza place near the thruway. They split a large cheese pie and Betty insists on paying because JB has been using her gas for this little field trip. It unfortunately depletes her Chic funds by $14, and Betty makes a mental note to attempt to be more frugal in the future.

Next, they drive out to Thornhill, the old Blossom mansion that was half burnt to the ground in a fire a few years ago. This seems like exactly the kind of place Betty’s mom would disappear to (because if Alice is going to live in rubble it’s going to be ostentatious rubble). But it’s completely abandoned, save for the wildlife that’s taken up residence in the shell of what was formerly the grand ballroom.

Finally, the girls head east towards Greendale, very nearby the soap factory where they’d attended the party the previous evening. The area is littered with empty warehouses and the girls spend the better part of an hour peering through cracked and dirty windows trying to spot a misplaced Stepford wife.

But all is quiet on the western front, or at least Alice is nowhere to be seen.

“This is hopeless.” Betty huffs, yanking open the passenger door and climbing despondently into the truck. “Mom isn’t in Riverdale anymore, Jelly. She could be anywhere! She could be in Wyoming or Alabama or even freakin’ Mexico.”

“Well I doubt she’s in Mexico.” JB says quietly, joining Betty in the truck and turning over the engine. “Your mom never really did like ‘brown’ people.”  

Betty bursts out laughing at that. She clearly recalls how unimpressed Alice had been when the Martinez family moved onto Elm Street a few years ago.

For at least three months, Alice had insisted they close all the curtains every time anyone left the house (“just in case they try to scope our place for valuables to send back to their poor relatives in Tijuana”) despite the fact Mr Martinez was a well-to-do accountant and his wife was a structural engineer.

“She was always a bit of a nut job, but she was a good mom.” Betty sighs, fighting to hold back tears. “I had a good childhood and she took care of me. So why has she done this to me now?”

“Come on, let’s go home.” JB says, reaching across to pat Betty on the shoulder. “I’ll cook spaghetti and we can watch cartoons.”

“Thanks, Jelly. Pasta makes everything better.” Betty smiles, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

The shock absorbers and struts in the old truck are a little worse for wear, and the cabin bounces with every imperfection on the road. The monotonous movement lulls Betty into an exhausted sleep and she doesn’t awaken until the vehicle slows to enter Sunnyside and JB loudly and unexpectedly breaks the silence.

“What in the ever-loving hell is this?” she cries incredulously.

Betty is instantly alert. She wakes with a start, her hands flying out to grasp the dashboard to steady herself.

“What’s the matter?” she gasps, glancing over at her best friend in confusion.

JB parks the truck and motions to the half dozen bikes suspiciously lined up outside their trailer. As she unbuckles her seatbelt and opens the door, they can both hear jovial chatter and indie music.

“Is Jughead having a party that he didn’t tell you about?” Betty frowns.

Jellybean is out of the truck like a shot, stomping towards the front door. Betty scampers to follow her, several paces behind, and just catches the door right before it slams shut in her face. But just as she moves to step inside the trailer, JB appears in the doorway again.

“There’s nobody here. Come on.” she says, grabbing Betty by the arm and practically dragging her down the three narrow stairs and around the side of the double wide to the vacant lot that sits adjacent the home.

There, they find maybe ten Serpents sitting on folding camp chairs around a bonfire lit in an old trashcan. There’s a slick bluetooth pill speaker pumping out tunes (Betty is at first confused as to how any of them could afford Beats by Dre, then stupidly realizes it’s stolen goods) and two 24 packs of Budweiser laid out on the coffee table that’s supposed to be in the living room.

Jughead notices the girls approaching and stands, meeting them close to the back wall of the trailer before they can reach the circle of snakes.

“Hi. Can I offer you a beer?” he cheerily asks them both, though he deliberately avoids eye contact with Betty.

Betty’s stomach clenches nervously and she tries not to feel disappointed. Of course, he hates her. He’s always hated her. She tries to remind herself that she’s supposed to hate him too.

“A beer?” JB hisses angrily. “No you can’t offer us a beer. Jughead you’ve never thrown a party in the entire twenty-three years you’ve been on planet Earth. So what exactly is going on here now?”

“It’s not a party. It’s just a gathering.” he corrects his sister carefully. “It’s Saturday night and I thought we all needed to relax.”

Jellybean has never shied away from confrontation, particularly with her older brother. They can both be hot headed (clearly a genetic trait) and Betty half suspects they enjoy squabbling with one another. Like it’s some kind of traditional Jones hobby.

“Relax? No.” JB snaps. “This is not okay. Betty and I were going to watch cartoons. Now we’re going to have to mingle with a bunch of gang bangers.”

Jughead’s eyes widen and he shakes his head sharply as soon as the insult leaves JB’s mouth. “Bean, chill out. I only invited cool people. There’s no _gang bangers_ here.”

JB rolls her eyes and juts her chin roughly towards the seat Jughead has just vacated. “I’m not blind, you know. Sweet Pea is sitting just over there. _He’s_ a gang banger.”

“He’s my best friend, Jellybean.” Jughead growls. “Back off.”

At that, Betty is instantly enraged.

“Nice to know you can come to Sweet Pea’s defense but not mine.”

Betty only realizes she has spoken when both the Jones siblings whip their heads sharply in her direction. It was honestly never her intention to dredge the incident from the previous evening back up again and she flushes immediately under the scrutiny of their gazes.

“Betts, what are you talking about?” JB asks, still eyeing Betty suspiciously.

“Hey here’s an idea.” Jughead cuts in deliberately, before Betty has a chance to respond. “JB why don’t you invite Andy to come over? I bet he’d like to come hang out here for a few hours. You should ask him.”

JB is the world’s most profusely loyal yet also the world’s most easily distracted best friend and she seems to light up like the Rockefeller Christmas Tree at the mere suggestion. When Betty begrudgingly agrees with Jughead (for JB’s sake – because she can see how infatuated these two kids are with one another), JB momentarily excuses herself to step inside and call her new boyfriend.

Betty swallows nervously, suddenly standing alone in the willowy grass and weeds, save for Jughead. Amongst these darkly dressed and effortlessly cool southsiders, she feels extremely self-conscious in her cutesy pink sweater and pony tail and wonders if maybe she should go inside and change outfits. But everyone has seen her now, and it’s too late for her to pretend to be someone she isn’t.

Too preoccupied with thoughts of her boring cookie-cutter personality, Betty doesn’t notice Sweet Pea until it’s too late. She just looks up and he’s suddenly standing right in front of her.

 To her surprise, Jughead _does_ notice and carefully closes the Jellybean sized gap between them, then very subtlely angles his body so that Betty is half tucked behind him.

“Well well.” Sweet Pea practically sneers. “You sure made quite a mess of yourself last night, Blondie.”

Betty’s jaw tightens so intensely she can actually hear her teeth scrape together as she peers up (way up – he’s _very_ tall) at him.

Jughead’s body language is casual but his eyes tell a somewhat different story. From this side view, Betty can see anxiety settled within the crevices of his face. He laughs, though, as he claps Sweet Pea on the back.

“Don’t pretend you’ve never been messy drunk before, Pea.” he chuckles. “Remember that time at the Wyrm when you chugged an entire bottle of Tequila then blew chunks all over Viper?”

Sweet Pea steps right up to the outer edge of Betty’s personal space bubble and stares her down. Betty, to her credit, refuses to flinch or yield.

“I don’t know how things roll in California, but if you’re going to spend some time here in New York you need to behave.” he warns darkly.

“Behave like what?” Betty splutters, tipping her chin upward to show she isn’t afraid. “Behave like you?”

Betty can feel fingers curling into her bicep and she knows without looking that it’s Jughead. He’s sending her a silent warning to cease and desist. She knows she should shut up – she knows Sweet Pea is a threat and this is a battle she won’t win.

But she also remembers how it felt all those years ago when Sweet Pea had tried to mug her. She never wants to feel that way again. She never wants to show this man weakness.

Suddenly, a perky brunette with an eyebrow piercing comes running over and wraps her hand around Betty’s shoulder. For a moment Betty feels slightly suffocated, with Jughead gripping her right side and this girl now on her left.

“You’re Betsy, right?” the girl giggles.

“It’s Betty.” she replies, bristling slightly and shrugging off the stranger’s arm.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Betty. My name is Sharna.” she grins enthusiastically. “Come over and sit with us and meet the other Serpent ladies.”

Before she can even resist, this Sharna person is tugging her over to a small group of two other girls. Betty glances briefly over her shoulder, and the relief on Jughead’s face is almost palpable. But then he turns to Sweet Pea and starts whispering heatedly.

The second they’re out of the boys’ ear shot, Sharna’s bubbly façade disappears and she immediately becomes more even-tempered.

“Sorry about that.” she shrugs sheepishly. “You just looked like you maybe needed rescuing. Sweet Pea can be a little intimidating before you get to know him.”

“And after you get to know him.” a goth girl adds helpfully.

Sharna rolls quickly through introductions – the red head with the neck tattoo is Meredith and the goth girl with the mohawk sitting next to her is Nova.

Betty learns that Nova is a Serpent by blood, Sharna is a Serpent recruit and Meredith is neither. She’s only part of the group by association, namely because her boyfriend Butch is a gang member. Betty wonders if it’s usual for Serpents to date outside their own ranks, given how up-tight they seem to be about isolating themselves from the general Riverdale population.

JB returns moments later, wrapping each girl (including Betty) up in a friendly hug before sitting down next to Sharna and delving into an enthusiastic conversation about Andy, who is apparently on his way over.

Betty feels more than a little on the outer, despite the fact she’s sitting very close by her best friend. She reminds herself that these are the people Jellybean spends her time with while she’s away at college, and she can’t fault her for making connections outside of their mutual network. After all, she has Veronica.

Suspecting that Meredith is probably the other girl most on the outer (given her lack of official Serpent status) Betty decides to be bold and strike up a conversation.

“So how long have you and Butch been together?” she asks.

Meredith sips on her beer and then wipes at her mouth, but provides absolutely no response. She doesn’t even look in Betty’s direction.

“How long have you been dating Butch?” Betty asks again, slightly louder this time.

After a moment, Meredith glances in her direction and starts slightly when she sees Betty staring at her expectantly.

“I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” she asks in alarm. “It’s just that you’re sitting on my bad side.”

Betty is momentarily confused, then gasps as Meredith draws back her long red hair to reveal a jagged scar where her right ear should be. No, it’s not just a scar. There’s also some kind of brand that’s been burnt into her flesh. Betty immediately recognizes it as a Serpent.

Oh God.

“It’s okay.” Meredith smiles kindly, watching Betty gawk at the side of her face. “You can ask.”

“Um, what happened to you?” Betty splutters anxiously.

“The Serpents don’t take kindly to outsiders. They never liked the fact Butch was dating me, because I refused to join the gang.” Meredith explains.

Well that answers _that_ question, Betty thinks. The Serpents are indeed incestuous and date from within their own ranks, rather than seeking companions from the wider community.

“What did they do?” she gulps, leaning forward in her seat.

“Butch took a job for the Serpents last year – a pretty standard Jingle Jangle drop over in Midvale.” Meredith says calmly, as if she’s discussing the weather or the price of orange juice. “But he messed up, crashed his bike and lost the shipment. We thought maybe he’d cop a beating as punishment, but instead I guess the leadership decided psychological pain was more fitting than physical torment.”

Betty reels back, her hands covering her mouth. “You mean they cut off _your_ ear to teach your boyfriend a lesson?”

“Yep.” Meredith nods. “They grabbed me in the middle of the night, held me down and just hacked it right off. Then they marked me with the Serpents symbol as a permanent reminder to Butch.”

“Oh my gosh that’s awful.” Betty whispers in horror. “Why didn’t you guys just leave?”

Meredith laughs and rolls her eyes. “Trust me, we tried. But the Serpents are forever. Once you join, you’re in for life. They told Butch straight up that if he tried to leave then they’d hunt us down and kill us both and we really believed them.”

Betty can feel her arms physically trembling as the shock reverberates through her body. She’d known the Serpents were sinister, but nothing like this. What this poor girl is describing is some next level thug insanity. It’s not quiet, sleepy Riverdale; it’s American History X.  

“How can you stand to be here right now?” Betty asks. “I personally couldn’t socialize with the people who destroyed my life.”

Meredith smiles again and sips at her beer. “The Serpents are like a big family. I have my friends and allies here. These are the people I trust to keep my boyfriend safe. But like any family full of snakes, we just have to be super vigilant not to get bitten again.”

Feeling her skin crawl, Betty glances up and notices Jughead staring at her intensely from across the dumpster fire. There’s an unbridled depth to his gaze, a desperate need and a churning anxiety. Betty’s mind immediately begins to spiral.   

When Jughead disappears inside the trailer moments later, Betty immediately excuses herself from her conversation with Meredith and runs after him.

She pads nervously through the living room and down the hallway to find him in his bedroom. His face is hidden within his closet, and he’s extremely preoccupied rifling through his stuff.

She leans heavily on the doorjamb and bites down on her thumbnail, waiting for him to finish. Or perhaps simply waiting for the right words to come to her mind.

But instead, he must sense her presence because he suddenly slams his closet door shut and turns to look over at her.

“I’m sorry.” he declares ardently, hands coming up to rest against the ugly green wood of the closet.

There’s such a passionate undercurrent of emotion in his voice that Betty is half knocked into a stupor, without even factoring his apology into the equation.

“I’m so sorry that you overheard me say those horrible fucking things about you last night.” he continues. “You don’t have to believe me, but I want you to know that I said them to protect you.”

Betty opens her mouth only to let in a shuddering gasp of oxygen and fill her burning lungs. As soon as the air is down her trachea, it’s almost as if her entire body sparks ablaze with pooling warmth in her stomach and tingles trickling down her limbs.

Because the thing is, she _does_ believe him.

Knowing what she knows now, she can view the sordid exchange outside the soap factory bathroom in a whole new light. She really just wishes he’d been more upfront with her. Like: _hey by the way I’m going to downplay my feelings for you in front of my friends because if I piss them off they might try to sever one of your body parts with a meat cleaver._

Though she supposes that kind of confession probably isn’t the most romantic way to commence a flirtation, or whatever they hell they’ve managed to embroil themselves in.  

“You’re not bland, Betty. Nothing about you is bland.” he says, turning to look at her. “You’re not now. You never were.”

Betty is completely taken aback, and only partially because she hadn’t been expecting him to speak again. At least not to say _these_ words.

“I think you’re wrong.” she sighs nervously, before pausing to take another big gulping breath. “You were right last night. I’m nothing like those cool Serpent girls. I mean just look at this stupid outfit.” she gesticulates down at the babyish pink sweater and blue jeans combo she’s wearing.

Jughead shrugs casually and takes a step towards her, but remains a safe distance away near his bed. It’s almost as if he’s trying hard not to scare her off. Or maybe he’s scared of himself.

“I’m looking, Betty. I’ve _been_ looking.” he says, his lips ever so slightly turning upward. “Listen, I’m not going to spurt some bullshit about how I’ve loved you since we were kids. Because let’s be honest, you were like three years old when we first met and I was ten so that’d be creepy – “

“Whoa hold on there!” Betty interjects, letting out a single incredulous huff. “I was _seven,_ Jughead.”

“But I’m also not going to lie to you and tell you that I don’t feel something for you now.” he continues without pause, speaking completely over the top of her. “Because I do. I feel something intense. I felt it the second I saw you outside the Whyte Wyrm on Thursday. And I think maybe you felt it too.”

Betty is once again rendered dumbstruck. She isn’t entirely sure she has heard him correctly, so she just stands there stupidly in the doorframe and gawks at him.

“It would be incredibly safer for you if these feelings went nowhere. Do you understand?” Jughead asks gruffly. “The Serpents are dangerous and I don’t know if I have the power to fully protect you.”

“But Jellybean told me you’ve stepped back from gang life.” Betty is very close to crying, and her voice cracks midway through her sentence. “You’re doing that whole mechanic thing now?”

“I have stepped back.” Jughead nods, running an anxious hand through his shaggy black hair. “Once you’re in the gang you can never truly leave, but with my father as leader I got more freedom. I was given the chance to keep myself on the straight and narrow.”

“So what’s the issue?” she implores him.

“My Dad has gone, Betty!” Jughead shouts, more frustrated than angry. “He’s been gone for months and nobody knows where he is. The Serpents’ second in command has recently taken over as King Regent until my dad returns, and let’s just say Tall Boy is _not_ as lenient as FP Jones. It’s a whole new world order for the Serpents now.”

“So leave!” Betty shouts back, stepping fully into the bedroom. “JB is going to college soon anyway so there’ll be nobody you care about left in Riverdale for the Serpents to even hurt. Come back to California with me. You could get a job there and truly start afresh. We could – “

“Betty you don’t get it.” Jughead interrupts in a frenzy, gesturing wildly with his hands. “They’ll come to California. They’ll find me. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill _you._ They don’t take kindly to being crossed. The only way I’m leaving the Serpents is in a body bag. End of story.”

At this, Betty finally breaks down into sobs. One of her hands comes up to cover her mouth, the other clutching at the base of her throat.

Jughead reaches his arms out toward her, then clearly thinks better of it because he shakes his head and walks back to his closet. This time when he opens it, he pulls out a red and black flannel. He moves swiftly across the room and drapes the clothing across her shoulders. His face is hard, but his hands are so careful with her.

“Here.” he says quietly. “I saw you shivering outside, I thought maybe you were cold.”

Betty smiles through her tears and let’s Jughead guide her arms through the sleeves so that she can wear the garment properly. The dark colors of the shirt clash horribly with the sweet pink of her sweater, but something about wearing them together feels so right. Betty can’t help but see the parallel between the clothing and herself and Jughead.

“Are you okay?” Jughead asks softly, bringing the palm of his hand up to cup her face so that he can brush away stray tears with the pads of his thumb. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m okay.” she sniffles, leaning into his touch. “It’s just a lot to contemplate.”

There’s a sudden insistent thumping on the trailer wall, coming from outside in the yard. Betty and Jughead both start slightly, but don’t let go of each other.

“Jones! You in there? We’re going to the Wyrm. Get your ass into gear.”

It’s Sweet Pea’s demanding voice and Betty knows their time for conversation is rapidly coming to a close.

“Jug?” she murmurs, tilting her face upward to look him in the eye.

“Yeah, Betts?” he murmurs back, gazing down at her as his arms wrap fully around her waist.

“Did you organize this whole party just so I could meet Meredith?” she asks curiously.

Jughead smiles at her, his hands already moving again to grasp her shoulders as he ghosts his lips across her forehead. He then pulls right back and casts her with a faux unamused look.

“It’s not a party.” he deadpans. “It’s a gathering.”

“Semantics.” Betty smirks.

Jughead steps away from her then, snatching his black leather jacket off the back of his desk chair.

“I’ll be back later.” he says softly. “But please think about what I’ve said. If you don’t want to take this any further, I’ll completely understand. Okay?”

Betty offers nothing more than a closed mouth smile and a judicious nod of her head. Jughead squeezes her arm in silent farewell as he steps past her into the hallway, but he doesn’t look back as he heads out the front door and disappears with Sweet Pea.

By the time Betty composes herself and heads back outside to the bonfire, the party (wait, _gathering_ ) has well and truly quietened. Most of the Serpents appear to have gone to the Wyrm with Sweet Pea and Jughead, leaving behind only Jellybean, Meredith and another ‘Serpent wife’ who introduces herself as Foxy.

Naturally, Jellybean notices the flannel wrapped tightly around Betty’s torso the exact moment she rejoins the group, and immediately starts grinning like the cat that got the cream. Betty rolls her eyes at her best friend but decides it’s smartest to hold her tongue.

As the sun dips below the horizon, leaving nothing but pink cotton candy streaks to dance across the lingering clouds, the fire in the trashcan is doused with several buckets of water and the four girls head inside the Jones trailer (with Meredith and Betty hoisting the heavy old coffee table back into place in the middle of the cramped living room).

Together, they all cook the spaghetti. Jellybean only has enough pasta for two, but they somehow manage to stretch it to feed four mouths and if that’s not a quintessential southside talent Betty isn’t sure what is.

Despite the circumstances, Betty finds herself enjoying the company of these young women. They’ve grown up with completely different lives to her, and been through such terrible hardships, yet they’re warm and inviting. Not once throughout the course of the evening does Betty feel like an outsider.

It’s only once the guests bid them farewell, and the trailer falls into an eerie silence, that Betty’s mind begins to churn. JB is working the Sunday morning breakfast shift at Pops, so she thankfully doesn’t try to grill Betty too hard on what exactly is going on with Jughead (because truthfully Betty isn’t even able to answer that question yet).

The girls shower, brush their teeth, turn out the lights and clamber into Jellybean’s bed together. Within minutes, JB’s breathing evens out and Betty can tell that she’s fallen asleep.

For Betty, however, sleep is predictably not forthcoming.

The window is open and the half moon is casting a dancing iridescent pattern across the popcorn ceiling. Betty is still watching the tendrils of light crawl across the roof just after midnight when the sound of Jughead’s motorcycle draws near.

Betty’s reaction to the sound is visceral and fills her with unwarranted nervous anticipation. She quickly rolls over onto her side, tucking her arm underneath her pillow.

The front door opens and closes, the bathroom light momentarily illuminates the hallway and then Betty hears the sound of Jughead’s bedroom door clicking shut.

For a little while, Betty holds her breath. She waits for something. Anything. A noise, a cough, a sign of movement on the other side of the thin trailer wall.

After a while, she sighs heavily and rolls onto her other side. She knows she should be trying to sleep but she can’t stop wondering what Jughead is doing.

Sleep is eluding her, so if he’s happily asleep in his own room does that mean he cares less about this whole pseudo relationship than she does? Betty grits her teeth and flops onto her back.

“Oh my God, Coop.” JB hisses in the dark. “Your thinking is keeping me awake and I start work in like four hours. Can you please knock it off?”

Betty gasps because she hadn’t even realized Jellybean was awake. But her psyche is immediately flooded with guilt.

“Sorry, Jelly.” she whispers back contritely. “I was just thinking about, um, my mom. I might go make myself a hot drink and sit out in the living room for a while.”

JB let’s out a singular low chuckle. “Yeah. Okay, cool. Say hello to _your mom_ for me when you’re crawling into the bed next door.”

Betty huffs indignantly, but doesn’t deny Jellybean her potshot. Instead, she pulls back the covers and slips wordlessly from the room.

Her hand is on the knob to the door across the hall before she can even stop and process what she’s doing. She tiptoes silently into Jughead’s bedroom and squints in the darkness to try and make out her surroundings.

Once her eyes adjust to the low light, she can easily catch sight of Jughead on the bed. He’s lying on his stomach, with one hand splayed out on the mattress and the other tucked underneath the pillow his head is resting on. He isn’t wearing a shirt and the cotton sheet is pooled enticingly around his waist. Betty immediately wonders whether he’s wearing anything on his bottom half.

She takes an unconscious step towards the bed, then physically halts herself and raises both her hands in shock. She has no freakin’ idea what exactly she is doing. She isn’t this girl. She isn’t the girl who let’s herself into boys bedrooms uninvited.

She balks, turns and rushes from the room, letting the door latch as quietly as possible behind her. She exhales sharply and rests her adrenaline filled body up against the drywall in the hall.

“Oh God, Betty pull yourself together.” she quietly pep talks herself. “What were you going to do? Just wake up a sleeping human for no damn reason? Seriously get a grip.”

She decides the best thing to calm her nerves is actually to follow through with her original plan and make herself a hot drink. She is so far out of her element and she truly has no idea what she’s trying to accomplish by wandering aimlessly around the trailer in the middle of the night. She’s a ball of stress and lust and confusion and possibly still a little hungover.

Betty takes two steps towards the kitchen before her feet seem to move of their own volition and she’s suddenly rushing back into Jughead’s bedroom.

She has absolutely no end goal in mind as she creeps as inaudibly as possible across the carpet to stand with her knees abutting the mattress. She nervously drags her lower lip between her teeth, mutely looking down on this beautiful, sleeping boy like some kind of Norman Bates psycho stalker. She stretches her fingers towards his shoulder, gets maybe six inches away from his skin, then hesitates and recoils.  

She takes a step away from the bed, changes her mind again and then moves back towards it once more. She feels like an idiot, she most certainly looks like an idiot. She’s glad Jughead is asleep and not witnessing this crazy behaviour.

“Have you ever considered dropping out of college and taking up a career in interpretive dance? Because this display you’ve been putting on is quite impressive.”

Betty yelps in fright as Jughead’s voice abruptly cuts through the silence of the blackened room like a shot from a gun.

He reacts so quickly, she isn’t quite sure what’s even going on. He is rising off the mattress, his arm comes out to ensnare her firmly around the waist and drag her onto the bed. Before she can even respond, she’s on her back, with her head on his pillow, and he’s above her. His body is flush against hers, his bare skin pressing achingly against the cotton of her tank top. His arms sheathe her to carefully lock her in place; one hand gently grasping her throat.

His mouth is hovering inches above hers and even in the darkness she can make out the smirk painted on his lips. He smells like cigarettes and leather and mint toothpaste. It’s a familiar smell, yet somehow tonight it is intoxicating.

Betty looks up at him and she can see it in his eyes – pupils blown wide. He wants her as much as she wants him. This is real and it’s happening.

“I…” she splutters awkwardly. “How long have you been awake?”

“Who says I was ever asleep?” he murmurs, brushing the stray tendrils of blonde hair away from her own heavily glazed eyes.

She knows she should feel embarrassed, but her mind is awash with desire and heat is rapidly pooling at the base of her stomach. He is literally all over her and she can’t even seem to formulate a rational thought. Without a shadow of a doubt she has never felt something this prevailing before, and the realization scares her more than just a little.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you all night.” he confesses, his lips brushing against hers as he speaks. “When I got home and you were already in bed I thought I was going to go fucking insane from longing. I just wanted to touch you.”

“T-touch me?” Betty stammers, her hands traveling the length of his lean yet muscular arms to grip his shoulders so she has something to anchor her to reality.

She’s half gone already, and he hasn’t even kissed her yet.

“Yeah.” he nods. “Touch you like this.”

Then he’s moving again. He uses the hand around her throat to tip her head back against the pillow and simultaneously lowers his face. His lips find the pressure point at the juncture of her neck and jaw in a hot, wet, open-mouthed caress.

His other hand travels the length of her body, grabs first at her hip and kneads the flesh there, then urgently thrusts the fabric of her shirt further up her chest to give him access to the waist band of her shorts.

Betty gasps and her eyes flutter closed completely, her fingernails finding purchase in Jughead’s deltoids. Every single cell in her body is buzzing. She knows she’s in a freefall, but she’s powerless to save herself (not that she even wants to).

“Jug…” she pants longingly.

Jughead shifts his face again and suddenly he’s kissing her mouth. There are fingers across her scalp, there’s a hand on her breast, her shirt is being pulled up over her head completely and discarded on the floor.

Betty can’t fathom how he’s even moving so quickly, or in so many places at the same time. Every touch is both new and intense.

“Hey.” he says earnestly, pulling away from her slightly so that he can look down at her properly. “If we’re going to do this, I need you to understand the dangers involved.”

Betty groans at the interruption and raises her pelvis to meet his, practically gyrating against him. She’s drunk on lust and she wants more. She needs him to move.

“This can never be anything more than what is now. You understand?” he continues, gently stilling her body with applied pressure from his own. “I’m always going to be a Serpent.”

“You already read me the warning label this afternoon, remember?” she moans desperately.  

“Betts.” he says insistently, shaking her shoulders lightly to jar her from her carnal stupefaction. “I’m not kidding around. This isn’t some cliché movie where we fall in love and you find out I’m a gang member with a heart of gold. I’m not some nice boy you bring home to meet your family.”  

He moves further up her body so that he can place a calming hand across her forehead, and in doing so traps a tress of her knotted blonde hair awkwardly beneath his arm.

“Ouch.” she hisses.

Instantly, Jughead is up and off her. He rolls onto the mattress beside her, quickly sitting up so that he has a better vantage point to check her over.

“Are you okay?” he asks worriedly. “Did I hurt you?”

Betty laughs, tucks her hair safely back under her own head and then reaches for him. He allows her to entwine their fingers, but continues to appraise her concernedly.

“Oh yeah. You’re definitely not a nice boy. You’re certifiably bad.” she mocks him. “And just for the record I don’t really have a family anymore.”

He chuckles then flops onto the pillow beside her, reaching across to wrap his arm around her and place several sweet kisses along her cheeks, mouth and nose. The passion between them has dissipated for the time being, but what’s left behind is a warmth and a strongly growing connection.

“Your family is here.” he whispers, drawing her closer so that she can rest her head on his chest. “I think you and Jellybean have been each other’s families for a long time.”

“We have. The Cooper-Jones girl gang.” Betty smiles fondly, tilting her head up to look at him. “Do you want to join?”

He laughs again. “Thanks for the offer but you probably need to have a vagina to be in a girl gang.”

“Nuh-uh!” she giggles. “We’re an equal opportunity gang.”

“Good to know.” he smirks. “Get some sleep, okay? We can talk more about vaginas later.”

He rolls her over so that she’s on her side facing the window, and he cuddles up to her from behind, their legs interlacing, and his arm thrown lazily across her waist. Her naked back absorbs the heat from his skin and it’s almost like electricity passes between them.    

“Not my vagina.” she says through a yawn. “It’s really bland.”  

Jughead grunts in mock disgust and brings his hand up to tickle her. She squeals and tries to push him away, but he winds his arm even more tightly around her and brings her snugly against him.

“Are you ever going to let me forget that horrible low point of my life?” he asks somewhere near her ear, though she can hear the smile in his voice.

“Maybe when we’re seventy.” she replies, grinning widely.

Sudenly a thought occurs to her and she cranes her neck trying to catch a glimpse of him over her shoulder.

“Jug why don’t you run away?” she asks. “From the Serpents, I mean. Just disappear.”

“You mean like fake my own death?” he laughs. “And I could meet you a month later at the Canadian Sign Post Forest? I’d be the one in the silly hat holding the maple leaf.”

“No I’m serious, Juggie!” she says frustratedly. “If you run somewhere the gang can’t find you, then they can’t hurt you.”

“But they can still hurt _you_.” he counters. “Even if they never figure out that you mean something to me, they can hurt Jellybean. Or Jellybean’s boyfriend. Or Jellybean’s boyfriend’s parents. You get it?”

Betty sighs deeply and nods. “Yeah, I do. It’s never ending. But it’s just so unfair.”

“Life isn’t fair, Betty.” he answers lightly. “Don’t worry about it right now. It’s late and you need to rest.”

Betty nestles herself down into his embrace and he sweetly layers kisses across the crown of her head.

“Will you still be here in the morning?” she asks timidly.

“Yeah, Betts.” Jughead smooths her hair and kisses her one more time. “Because this is literally my bed. Now go to sleep.”

Betty smiles so brightly she wonders if her face may split in half. She clutches at the fingers on his hand, twisting the silver ring on his middle finger. Jughead goes to sleep quickly after that. She knows the exact moment he falls into slumber - his grip on her torso slackening and his breathing becomes rhymical.

“Goodnight, Juggie.” she whispers into the darkness, moments before following him into slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, please let me know what you think! Sorry for the likely multitudinous errors...11,500 words was a bitch to self edit. I'm going to suggest it'll be a week before the next update but for those who are interested I'll post on my tumblr (username sadie-quinn) to let you know how chapter 4 is tracking. Because that's a thing that I do now that I'm trendy and use tumblr.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Does anyone read this top notes section? Am I writing to myself up here?
> 
> Few housekeeping things:  
> 1\. Firstly I've updated the chapter count to 8 which is great news if you like this fic and terrible news if you don't.  
> 2\. If you follow me on tumblr (I'm @sadie-quinn come find me, guys!) you would have seen me post that in writing chapter 4 I got a little out of control and ended up with more than 17,000 words. So I've wisely split the chapter in half and what you're about to read is essentially chapter 4A.  
> 3\. This is my last "fun" chapter in this fic and you will see there's a good portion of fluffiness here, hidden amongst the angst. Let this serve as your official warning that from chapter 5 onwards I'm cranking the angst up to 100. 
> 
> Happy reading!

Betty opens her eyes languidly, relaxes into a gloriously slow and cat-like stretch then pushes the sheet away and sits up in bed.

She can hear companionable chatter in the living room of the trailer, and maybe also the low hum of the television or the radio.

A quick glance at her phone tells her that it’s still relatively early – just after 7am. She knows Jughead will leave for work within the hour and if Jellybean is also awake that has to mean both the Jones siblings are due to work that day.

Betty crawls to the bottom of the bed then reaches out an arm to hook the top of her oversized weekender bag with her fingertips and drag it towards her.

Unfortunately it’s the only bag she has brought with her to Riverdale (having only intended to stay for a couple of days _at the most_ to confront her mother about the missing money) so the few outfits she has at her disposal are on heavy rotation.

After two weeks in upstate New York, she really wishes she could afford to buy a few new pieces to manage the change in climate from West Coast to East, but the money Chic so ‘generously’ gifted her is practically all used up.

She snags her red Stanford Cardinal sweatshirt from the top of her small pile of clothes and pulls it over her head, before finally hoisting herself up off the mattress and making her way down the short hallway of the double wide.

Jughead is in the kitchen, already dressed in his work clothes, and Jellybean is flopped across the couch eating Cheerios straight from the box. She grins at Betty as she pops another handful of o’s into her mouth then returns to watching morning cartoons.

Betty feels a warmth permeating her soul as she takes in the scene. It’s funny how quickly this dingy trailer in the bad part of a boring small town has become her happy place. In a way, she sort of feels like they’re just three kids all playing at being grown-ups. There’s no adultier adults to look out for them, so they just look out for each other.

Here, in this place, they all belong.

Betty chooses to sit at one of the unironically retro dining chairs placed around the small table near the window and takes a minute to respond to a text from Veronica, who has finally reached the city of love on her European vacay (though an engagement ring is frustratingly yet to be placed on her left hand).

She starts a little and nearly drops the phone as a mug is placed onto the table directly in front of her, and a warm body moves quickly past. Jughead leans down to brush a kiss across her forehead as he sinks into the chair opposite her, clutching at his own steaming cup.

Betty smiles at him, her grin only widening when she realizes he has gone to the trouble of making her coffee (and had clearly been in the process even before she woke up). He offers her a rare earnest smile in return then reaches for the sugar bowl and places three heaped teaspoons into his own mug.

“Now I know what you’re going to say, Betts.” he says sardonically. “That I’m already naturally sweet enough and don’t need all this sugar in my drink.”

Betty brings her cup slowly to her lips and rolls her eyes admonishingly as she swallows a mouthful of caffeine. The butterflies in her stomach take flight momentarily as she realizes he has prepared the drink exactly the way she likes it.

Jughead cares about the small things. He cares about her.  

“Perhaps you should lay off the sugar and fill your cup with spoonfuls of modesty instead.” she suggests, equally sarcastically.

“But how can I be modest when I managed to score a girl like you?” he returns flirtatiously. “I must be doing something right.”

“More than just a little something.” Betty replies alluringly, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Oh my God. Sickening.” JB groans, tossing her box of cereal onto the coffee table in mock disgust. “Can you two knock it off? I love you both but it’s way too early for this amount of romantic mush. In fact I _never_ need to see this level of mush from you guys. Not ever.”  

“Whatever, Jellybean. This isn’t even mush.” Jughead scoffs, his eyes twinkling. “Meanwhile, I saw you and Andy getting all cozy and cute in the kitchen last night when you thought Betty and I had gone to bed.”

“What? On the benchtop?” Betty gasps in horror. “Please, no. Not where we prepare our food Jellybean. That’s just unsanitary.”

JB stands up, exaggeratedly brushes the Cheerio crumbs off her fingers onto her starched canary yellow and white Pops uniform, then snags her keys from the glass bowl near the door.  

“Get over it – we were only cuddling.” she replies indignantly. “Meanwhile let’s not all forget the walls in this trailer are paper thin and I know for a very unfortunate fact what goes on in the bedroom you two share is _way_ more than cuddling.”

Betty feels her cheeks flush with embarrassment, but Jughead has the audacity to actually look conceited and almost proud when he hears Jellybean’s revelation. It’s not until the moment has already passed that Betty also realizes Jellybean has referred to Jughead’s bedroom as _their_ bedroom and her face melts into a hot shade of pink all over again.

She has been back in Riverdale for sixteen days and fifteen nights. And she has formally spent fourteen of those nights in Jughead’s bedroom (or thirteen if she didn’t count the night she was black out drunk and vomiting – except that she _does_ count it).

Despite being ‘together’ for a mere two weeks, and there deliberately not being a label on their relationship (“it doesn’t matter what we feel, Betts, this can never be an official thing because I need to keep you safe, okay?”), Betty’s possessions had swiftly been moved across the hall from Jellybean’s room and taken up residence in Jughead’s.

It wasn’t something Betty had forced on Jughead. In fact, it was Jughead who had relocated her bag of clothes one night while she was in the shower. She’d literally run across the hall to JB’s room with nothing but a towel clutched around her sopping torso, only to find her belongings markedly absent.

Betty took it as an unspoken sign that despite their lack of ability to go public with their romantic affiliation, Jughead didn’t plan to behave like a fuckboy (something Kevin has repeatedly warned her to watch out for over the past two weeks – though he’s never actually met Jughead and is merely basing his assessment on historical Riverdale gossip).

So really, technically speaking, Jellybean’s assessment is correct. Betty decides it is _their_ room and not just Jughead’s for as long as she remains a resident of the trailer.

“I’m going to work.” JB announces, dragging Betty from her silent musings. “Betts if it gets to lunch time and you’re done stewing over the fact I’ve overheard you having sex, feel free to come visit me at the diner.”

“Yeah thanks.” Betty mutters, still avoiding eye contact. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jughead follows JB outside and Betty can hear them discussing the truck, so she drains the last drops from her cup then gets up to rinse it under the faucet and heads back down the hall to the bedroom.

After many days spent trawling old newspapers at the local library, deep diving internet searches and visiting her mom’s former friends and colleagues (mostly the latter because high-strung Alice retained few of the former) Betty had finally accepted she needed to talk to Attorney McCoy about her options. Using her Cooper skills of persuasion, she’d convinced Attorney McCoy to speak with her pro bono, and the appointment had been set for later that morning.

She checks both the weather and the time on her iPhone and realizes she needs to hurry if she wants to look presentable _and_ make it to the bus stop on time. The conditions outside are mild for late June, so she decides to team her Cardinal shirt with her blue jeans and white sneakers.

As she tugs the pants up her legs and over her hips, she once again laments that she has entirely nothing that’s dressier than what she is wearing now. Of course Jellybean has extended an open invitation for Betty to access anything she likes from her own closet, but Hot Topic isn’t exactly Betty’s style (nor is it any more fancy than her sweater and jeans combo).

She is just reaching down to fetch her Keds from the floor when there’s rapid footsteps down the hall and Jughead comes crashing into the room. He grabs her around the waist and dramatically tackles her onto the mattress, flopping down alongside her.

Betty shrieks loudly but willingly allows the playful assault, giggling as he throws his body on top of hers and brings his hot lips down to cover her own. Suddenly it’s not funny anymore, and she thinks perhaps she’s melting. She can feel a warmth igniting in her stomach and something salacious sparks inside her. She reaches her hands up to grasp at his shoulders and drag him even more firmly towards her, but he abruptly resists and pulls back a little.

“Hey.” he says sweetly. “What are you doing tonight? Want to go on a date with me?”

Betty’s eyes go wide with surprise, and she shifts underneath him so that she can properly look him in the eye. Now that she’s really seeing him, she can tell that he’s nervous. Though she doesn’t really know why – it’s not like she’s going to turn him down.

“What happened to the whole _we can never be seen in public it’s for your own good_ thing you’ve been telling me on repeat?” she asks sceptically.

“Well,” he shrugs nonchalantly. “There’s this great little restaurant over in Midvale where nobody will ever find us. It’s a bit of a drive, but JB said I can borrow the truck. So what do you say?”

“I say yes.” Betty grins. “Definitely yes.”

Jughead smiles so broadly she worries his face is going to break. She’s never seen him so carefree and content. These past two weeks have turned him into a whole different version of himself. Or maybe this is the person he’s always been beneath the surface. The person JB always saw, but Betty never did. Either way, Betty is thrilled. 

He sits up then moves to stand, grabbing her hand to tug her up with him. But when she commences with her shoes again, he takes the opportunity to wrap his arms around her waist and draw her in for another smoldering kiss.  

“I don’t ever remember you being so sweet and fluffy.” Betty says, once they finally break apart. “What’s gotten into you, Jughead Jones?”

“I’m just…happy.” Jughead smiles. “For the first time in such a long time, I feel free. I’ve got my work at the garage, Jellybean is doing so good and I’ve got you now too. Life is on the up.”

Betty’s heart feels like it might explode. Mostly because she knows exactly how Jughead feels. Their worlds have been full of catastrophe over the past couple of years, and yet there is suddenly this sense of serenity. A wholeness that was missing before. A togetherness.

It’s that warmth of tranquillity that propels her all the way to the bus stop and over to the northside of town to Attorney McCoy’s office. She is practically buzzing as she sits in the waiting room, and hardly feels nervous at all.

Betty doesn’t necessarily subscribe to the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory in general (particularly not when she’s back on campus with a large and diverse student population) but for the town of Riverdale, the degrees of separation seem to be significantly reduced to one or two at best.

While Betty has never previously met Attorney McCoy, she did happen to attend school with her daughter Josie. The two girls hadn’t particularly liked one another (in other words – Josie was cool and popular whereas Betty was, well, Betty) but nor had they outwardly hated one another.

To make matters even weirder, Attorney McCoy is also the lawyer who represented Jughead in the grand theft auto case that he was jailed for a few years ago. Betty doesn’t know how she feels about this, but Jughead had insisted several times that McCoy is a ‘good egg’ and Betty has no real reason not to trust him.

“Betty? Come on in.”

Betty looks up as the office door opens and a slender woman appears in the room. She’s dressed smartly in a black suit, her hair coiffed in an up-do that’s clearly been created to look effortless (but in reality, undoubtedly took a great deal of effort).

Attorney McCoy’s eyes are kind and she’s smiling in a friendly way, but Betty acutely feels the awkwardness caused by the stark juxtaposition in their outfits. She feels stupid and plain in her jeans and sweatshirt so keeps her eyes on the tiled floor as she stands and scampers into the office, the door latching firmly closed behind her.

“Cardinal, hey?” Attorney McCoy asks interestedly, pointing a perfectly manicured finger in the direction of Betty’s shirt. “Are you a student at Stanford?”

Betty takes a seat on the wooden swivel chair on the opposite side of Attorney McCoy’s impressively large desk and nods shyly.

“Congratulations that’s a great school.” McCoy continues, when she realizes Betty isn’t going to verbally respond. “Have you declared a major?”

“Yes, Ma’am. History major.” Betty says, before smirking mirthlessly. “Mainly to annoy my mother.”

Attorney McCoy scowls, though her look remains somewhat light-hearted. “I’d chastize you for that, if I didn’t have the unfortunate honor of knowing Alice Cooper personally. She can be a little, uh intense.”

“Yes, she can.” Betty sighs. “She’s the reason I’m here today, actually.”

Before Betty knows it, the shyness has dissipated, and the entire repugnant story has poured out of her mouth. The weirdness of Edgar Evernever, her bank accounts drained dry, Veronica stepping in to pay her rent, temporarily moving into the Joneses trailer, the house on Elm Street sold and empty, and searching high and low for her mother without success – Betty includes every depressing detail. 

When she’s finally finished, Attorney McCoy no longer looks friendly and light-hearted. Instead, she looks downright furious. She immediately suggests there is solid grounds to sue Alice Cooper for Betty’s obvious financial losses as well as psychological harm and further significant punitive damages.

Of course, the obvious problem is that nobody knows exactly where Alice is actually hiding and it’s impossible to file a suit or serve papers if there’s no one around to serve them to. Betty’s initial hopefulness dissolves into sadness as the realization dawns upon her that she’s no better off than she was prior to meeting Attorney McCoy.

The silver lining comes as Betty is gathering her things and preparing to leave the office.

“Betty, wait.” Attorney McCoy calls after her. “Are you planning to stick around in Riverdale for the rest of summer?”

“I am.” Betty smiles sadly. “Summer quarter has already started so there’s not really much point in heading back to California just yet.”

She conveniently leaves out the part about her super intense feelings for a certain dark-haired Serpent. Whilst she’s happy for Attorney McCoy to know she’s living with Jughead, it’s probably not Jughead’s preference for her to make their relationship public – even to an authority figure.

“This may sound a little forward, but I’ve got a couple of really big cases coming up.” McCoy says. “I could really use a smart Stanford girl working research for me.”

Betty’s eyes widen in surprise and her face instantly lights up at the mere prospect. A job in Riverdale would go a long way to solving her most pressing and immediate problems. This means she could stay with Jughead for the remainder of the summer without having to give up on her search for her mother _or_ return to her apartment and attempt to find work. It also means she could contribute to the bills at the trailer and stop feeling like a shitty freeloader.

Attorney McCoy must sense Betty’s excitement because she raises her hands, palms outward, as if in an act of surrender.

“Full disclosure - the pay isn’t great and the research can be a little tedious.” she adds temperately, almost as if trying to soften the initial positivity of the offer. “It would be three full days a week, here in my office. You’d start Monday.”

“Attorney McCoy I would be so honored.” Betty gushes, trying so hard to keep her emotions in check. “Thank you. Thank you!”

Betty is so excited, she runs all the way to Pops to burn off the extra energy coursing through her veins. Her good mood is like a natural hit of methamphetamine, because she can’t remember the last time she ran so fast without Adderall in her system.

She’s so thrilled she can barely piece together the necessary words to explain to Jellybean why she’s acting like a lunatic.  

When her best friend finally deciphers that Betty has been offered a job (“A real job? An actual job? Right here in Riverdale? For the whole summer? Holy shit, Betts! That’s fantastic!”) there’s copious amounts of squealing and dancing and hugging right in the middle of the diner.

Their celebration lasts long enough for Pop Tate to overhear, and then bring over a congratulatory basket of fries with a strawberry shake. Betty is too joyful to be embarrassed by Pop’s sweet gesture (because general acts of kindness normally trigger her well-honed Cooper guilt) and wolfs them down in an artfully enthusiastic way she could only ever have learned from a Jones sibling.

After she is finished eating, Jellybean lends her all the money she currently has on her person ($23 in notes, a nickel and two dimes) and Betty catches the bus back to the Southside because that’s where the better thrift stores are.

There’s a strip mall on the northside, but Riverdale lacks a proper shopping mall (residents have to go to Centerville for something as fancy as that). South Avenue is the main and only shopping street on the southside that begins near the railway tracks, not far from the Whyte Wyrm and meanders for a quarter mile until it reaches the high school.

Betty imagines back in the day, it was probably a thriving metropolis with a diverse array of shops, restaurants and bars. Now, every second store has its windows boarded up and teens have taken it upon themselves to tag the bricks and doors with garish red and black spray paint.

The _Jones Tire and Auto Repair_ _Shop_ (which is less like a shop and more like a dingy garage, but every time Betty thinks of it she’s just so proud) is much further down the block, closer to the school. Betty considers rushing down there to tell Jughead her amazing news, but she isn’t sure how he’ll react to her hanging around the place in the middle of the day when anyone can see them.

So instead, she takes her time to browse the thrift stores because she’s suddenly in desperate need of clothes that won’t make her look ridiculous when she shows up for work on Monday. The amazing thing about the southside’s thrift stores is both their incredible bargain prices _and_ the fact the northsiders dump their upmarket clothes there every time they do a spring clean.  

The first store she tries is Goodwill and right off the bat she scores herself two suitable pencil skirts and a plain white wrap blouse that fits her very nicely. She then crosses the road and heads a little further down the block to the Salvation Army store where she browses unsuccessfully.

Luck is on her side once more at the Deals’n’Steals Consignment Shop where she manages to find a black corporate blazer that looks almost new for only three dollars, a couple more blouses and even a pair of basic nude pumps in her size.

Nothing is exactly the latest fashion, but it’s clean and neat and will serve Betty nicely until she earns herself a few pay checks and can make some strategic upgrades to her wardrobe.

The final destination on Betty’s hit list is the large Savers store. She finds a red pleated skirt that will work nicely with a few of her new shirts and then spots a gorgeous summery dress on a rack near the back of the store. It’s a soft peachy color with a form fitting bodice and a swing skirt that falls just above her knee. It’s vintage in the best possible way, with a soft lace overlay and a sweetheart neckline.

It’s not work appropriate attire, but it’s certainly date appropriate attire. Betty likes the way she feels when she slips it on in the fitting room, and she likes the way it hugs her curves. Immediately she knows she has to buy it and she can’t wait for Jughead to see her wearing it for their first ever actual real date.

Betty is headed for the cashier to pay for her items when a raggedy teddy bear catches her eye on a nearby shelf. It’s a soft brown plush, although a little tatty around the edges, it’s obviously been well loved. The toy immediately evokes a strong memory from her childhood.

“Mr Marmalade?” she gasps.

She snatches the teddy off the shelf and flips it upside down to check the bear’s feet. Sure enough, on the left foot the initials _B.C_ are carefully drawn in magic marker and the right foot is adorned with the much more sloppily written letters _A.A_.

Betty can still remember sitting on the Andrews front porch when she was five years old, with cute little Archie and the stolen black marker. They’d inscribed their initials on her favorite bear as a symbol of their forever friendship, and then Mr Marmalade had lived the rest of his days in Betty’s bedroom.

Seeing Mr Marmalade here in this thrift store makes Betty’s stomach drop. This is her toy. Here in this shop. This is proof undeniable, staring her right in the face (as much as an inanimate object can stare at anybody) that Alice Cooper had given away all of her daughter’s possessions.

And for the first time Betty is truly angry. Not sad, not disappointed, not confused. Just red, hot, angry. How could her own mother do this to her? How could someone who fed her and bathed her and cared for her when she was sick suddenly love her _so little_ that she could give away something as precious to her as Mr Marmalade?

Determinedly, Betty tucks the teddy under her arm and takes it to the front desk to pay. It’s only when the volunteer working the cash register rings up the items, Betty realizes she’s a dollar short and can’t afford to buy all three things.

She panics and does a quick mental recalibration – the skirt is definitely a necessity, so it’s going to come down to a choice between Mr Marmalade and the beautiful dress.

Her eyes move rapidly from the peach fabric to the raggedy bear. Back and forth, back and forth. She can see the cashier beginning to lose her patience and she knows she has to make a quick decision.

Hastily Betty decides that the toy represents her past, whilst the dress symbolizes her future. Or at least the future that she wants – one that involves Jughead, happiness and a whole new set of memories. With a gloomy sense of finality (and a whispered apology to poor Mr Marmalade), Betty picks up the bear and places him back on the shelf.

Two hours later, when she’s standing in the living room of the trailer, she knows she definitely made the right decision.

She has paired the dress with her strappy sandals, applied a light coating of natural makeup that accentuates her eyes and cheekbones, and styled her hair in loose waves. But whilst she appreciates the look she has created, it’s nothing compared to the fire and lust that instantly ignites Jughead’s eyes when he walks through the front door and catches sight of her.

“Holy shit, Betts.” he mutters, drawing his bottom lip hungrily between his teeth. “You look good enough to eat.”

He crosses the room in just three strides (it both helps that his legs are long and the trailer is small) and extends desperate fingers to snag her around the waist and draw her body towards his.

Betty opens her mouth to protest, but Jughead just sees it as an opportunity to bring his lips down on top of hers and push his tongue into her mouth. Betty immediately melts into the kiss, her arms moving of their own volition as her hands latch onto his neck and pull him even closer.

It only takes her half a minute to come to her senses, though, and firmly push him away.

“No, Juggie.” she giggles, trying to shake the desire from her body. “You’re all dirty from work.”

“Baby I know you like it when I’m dirty” he purrs somewhere near her ear before gently biting down on her earlobe. “And this gorgeous outfit you’re wearing is making me think dirty thoughts.”

“Dirty thoughts and grease stains are two very different things.” Betty laughs, once again pushing him away. “Besides, don’t you want to take me on our date before things get all hot and heavy?”

Something changes in Jughead then, and he too seems to come to his senses. The passion smoldering in his eyes dulls considerably and he languidly licks his lips then smiles and drops his hands back to his sides.

“You’re right. I _definitely_ want to do that.” he nods decisively. “Let me grab a quick shower.”

Jughead retreats to the bathroom and re-emerges shortly after dressed in black jeans and a tight, gray pullover. There’s no leather jacket in sight and he looks nothing like a gang member. Instead, he looks every bit like the tall, dark, delicious boy who is rapidly worming his way into Betty’s heart.

This time, it’s Betty whose eyes fill with lust, and who reaches for him on instinct alone. He smells so good and looks so good and she really just wants to drag him into their bedroom.

But Jughead is having none of it. He shoos her away with laughing eyes and informs her that Jellybean just texted to let him know she’s on her way home with the truck.

So determined is Jughead to ensure their planned date becomes an actuality, he goes and sits outside to wait for Jellybean. It’s strategic, Betty knows, because she is all but prevented from physically touching him in any intimate kind of way if he’s in full view of Sunnyside.

He leans up against his bike, his arms crossed over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankle. She follows him outside and he glances over to smirk at her in that smug, adorable way of his. He clearly knows how badly she wants him, and how much it’s killing her not to have access to his touch.

Deciding two can play at such a game, Betty perches herself on the bottom of the three stairs that lead up to the front door of the trailer. She leans forward enough that she can balance her elbows on her knees, and it gives Jughead a nice clear view of her cleavage (which is only accentuated by the neckline of the vintage dress).

“Jellybean won’t be here for a few minutes.” he suddenly announces, his eyes never once lifting from her chest. “Maybe we could just go back inside and…”

The rumbling of motorcycle engines catches their attention immediately.

Motorcycles aren’t unusual in Sunnyside, particularly given half the gang resides in the trailer park. But the Jones trailer is right up the back of the allotment and not many bikes take this route to reach the road.

Betty has just enough time to readjust herself and appear more modestly before two bikes with Serpent riders come unceremoniously to a stop right in front of them.

 Jughead groans and sits up perhaps a fraction straighter, but looks otherwise nonplussed as the riders remove their helmets.

Betty’s heart quickens instantly as she notices one of their visitors is Toni - the sexy biker babe from the soap factory party. She’s the one Jughead had been speaking to in the corridor outside the restrooms. The one who thinks she’s bland.

The other Serpent is Fangs, the friendly boy who’d fetched Betty a beer at that very same party. She offers him a shy half-smile, which he returns with a silent nod.

“Well, well.” Toni smirks, clapping her hands together gleefully. “Here you are again, Jughead Jones, with the cute little California blonde. Oh, young love. It’s so sweet to finally see you getting attached.”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah Topaz you totally caught us.” he deadpans sarcastically. “Betty and I are _romantically_ standing an entire _ten feet_ apart from one another. The fact that we’re also directly outside the house where we both live has nothing to do with it. Just call us Romeo and Juliet.”

Something akin to annoyance flashes momentarily across Toni’s face, before it’s once again replaced by arrogance and mirth.

“You and Goldilocks are shacking up already?” she asks mischievously. “What’s next? You guys going to adopt a dog and start wearing matching outfits? Because I’m a bit concerned that the preppy princess look won’t suit you, Jones.”

“You’re hilarious. Someone should give you a sitcom.” Jughead replies sardonically. “But seriously, we’re just waiting for Jellybean to arrive home so we can all go to a party. She’ll be here any minute so whatever you have to say, please say it quickly then leave.”

Toni looks annoyed again, particularly because Jughead is openly giving her the brush off, but she clears her throat and shoots a quick glance at Fangs (who is still quietly observing) before speaking once more.

“No parties for you tonight, lover boy.” she says with a wicked grin. “The boss is calling you in. We’ve got a job for you.”

The temperature in the trailer park drops by several degrees then instantly picks up by double the amount and Betty finds herself shuddering at the sudden change in atmosphere.

Jughead is enraged. He’s up off the bike and stalking across the yard until he’s mere inches from Toni’s face. He towers over her, but she grins and tilts her chin upward to fully meet his glare with her own look of twisted delight.

A beat later Fangs moves on them, but Betty is genuinely unsure if he’s trying to de-escalate the situation or simply looking out for Toni. He maneuvers his solid body between the two gnashing opponents and shoves Jughead in the chest. He stumbles away a little but otherwise firmly holds his ground.

Betty gasps at the sudden tension and violence, uncertain if she should be worried on Jughead’s behalf (and also for herself). She fearfully scrambles to a standing position then shuffles backwards until her shoulders roughly hit the exterior wall of the trailer. She feels like a coward shrinking into a corner, but she’s not a Serpent nor is she skilled at fighting.  

“Calling me in? The boss is calling me in? No fucking way.” Jughead seethes. “Nobody calls me in. As you are well aware, I don’t run jobs for the Serpents anymore. This isn’t new information.” 

Toni _tsks_ at him and shakes her head. “Times are changing, Jug. Papa Jones isn’t the king anymore and the new king doesn’t honor expired treaties.”

“Tall Boy is _not_ the new king.” Jughead snarls furiously, stepping up into Toni’s face once again. “He’s a placeholder until my father returns and you know it. He has no authority to call me in and I’m sure as fuck not working a job for him. Not tonight, not any night.”

A pick-up truck careens around the corner, and four sets of eyes simultaneously move in the direction of the unexpected interruption. It only takes Betty a moment to figure out that it’s Jellybean. She’s finally home, and not a moment too soon.

As soon as Jellybean notices the altercation taking place, she kills the engine and shoves the truck door open then marches over to join the fray. It’s quintessential Jellybean to rush into a conflict just to try and protect her brother – for all their squabbling, the Jones siblings always have each other’s backs.

Betty’s pounding heart and trembling mind is awash with relief when she notices Andy is also sitting in the passenger seat of the truck. They now outnumber the uninvited Serpents two to one, and she feels perhaps the situation may actually resolve itself in their favor.

Andy is marginally slower to exit the vehicle than his girlfriend, but the cogs are clearly turning in his brain as he makes a cursory safety assessment. He glances over at Betty who is still cowering timidly on the porch and motions for her to stay calm. She returns his gesture with a barely perceptible nod.

“What exactly is going on here?” Jellybean demands. “Toni don’t you have better things to be doing? Playing five finger fillet with your switch blade? Stealing candy from babies?”

“Shut your mouth, littlest Jones.” Toni growls. “I’m here on Serpent business. And since you refuse to officially join the gang, none of this concerns you. Walk away or I’ll cut your nose off for sticking it where it doesn’t belong.”

Jughead immediately grabs Jellybean by the arm and physically drags her behind him, so she’s metaphorically (though not actually) out of harm’s way. Jellybean attempts to break free from her brother’s hold, but eventually settles for peeking her angry face around the side of his lean torso.

“First you try to bring me in for a job under no relevant authority,” Jughead says furiously. “Then you threaten to maim the King’s daughter? Topaz you’d best check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

“I think maybe we should go.” Fangs murmurs almost imperceptibly to Toni. “I don’t want any Serpent bloodshed here tonight.”

“Damn right.” Jellybean pipes up, before turning her penetrating glare on Toni. “Be gone, witch, before someone drops a house on you.”

Toni rolls her eyes dramatically, but reluctantly allows Fangs to take her by the arm and lead her back to their bikes. Just when Betty thinks maybe it’s over and they’re actually going to leave, Toni whirls back around for a parting shot. Her lips are pursed in a hard-line scowl and her pink hair cascades around her face like a cotton candy waterfall.

“This isn’t over, Jones. You hear me?” she hisses. “You can’t hide behind your absentee daddy forever.”

“I’ll be sure to send him your way as soon as he gets home.” Jughead replies vacantly.

Toni starts her bike engine and opens the throttle, revving it aggressively. She smirks at Jughead, mock salutes to Jellybean then looks gleefully across at Betty, who is still quailing against the trailer.

“Catch you later, Malibu Barbie.” she hums audaciously.

Betty is furious. She can’t believe she’s quaking from fear caused by a pint-sized girl who clearly doesn’t even understand that there’s way more to California than Los Angeles _and_ that Malibu is literally six hours from her apartment. 

The second the motorcycle tail lights disappear from view, Andy rushes over to Jellybean and wraps her up in a tight hug.

“Are you okay?” he asks worriedly, brushing her dark hair away from her face.

Jellybean scoffs loudly then shrugs off his concern, but she’s also kind of glowing from the attention.

“Of course I am. I’ve known that wench since I was five years old. She doesn’t scare me.” she says, linking their hands together affectionately before glancing over her shoulder at Jughead. “You okay, big bro?”

Jughead is silent and it causes Betty to shift her attention from Jellybean to the older of the Jones siblings. But as soon as she locks eyes on him, she can do nothing to stop the shocked gasp from escaping her lips.

Jughead is practically drowning in intense, simmering rage. His hands are clenched into fists so tightly that his knuckles have become white as snow, his jaw is solidly locked, and his eyes squeezed firmly shut as he clearly fights to get his emotions under control.

“Um, maybe we should go inside.” Jellybean suggests quietly, somewhere close to Andy’s ear.

Betty waits for them to pass her by as they make their way to the trailer, and Jellybean reaches over to pat her affectionately on the shoulder before heading inside and closing the door behind her.

Jughead remains motionless on the weed infested lawn; the only sound his jagged breathing that’s coming in short, sharp bursts.

Betty wants to comfort him, but in truth she doesn’t know how. If she runs down the stairs and tries to hold him, will he shove her away? If she goes inside to give him some space to cool down, will he feel rejected? If she tells him everything is going to be okay, will he shout at her? Her anxiety quickly bubbles to the surface and she loudly clears her throat to gain his attention.

“We…uh, we don’t have to go tonight.” she says timidly, trying to think of the most helpful way to deal with this situation. “We can just stay home.”

Jughead’s eyes snap open and his icy stare is aimed squarely at her face, but he’s so livid that Betty wonders if he sees her or if he’s actually looking straight through her.

“Like hell.” he barks, his voice coarse from anger. “I promised you a date so we’re going on a date.”

“But Jug.” she splutters nervously. “It’s not important.” 

“It’s important.” he shouts back. “It’s important to me. Get in the truck.”

“I…”

“I said get in the fucking truck, Elizabeth!” he all but roars.

Betty is so shocked she makes an involuntary mewling sound, but is immediately spurred into action. She dashes down the rickety wooden steps and runs as fast as she can until she reaches the passenger door that Andy left ajar when he had vacated the vehicle in such a rush.

Once she’s inside and her seatbelt is firmly fastened, she takes a shuddering breath and wills herself to stay calm. She keeps her eyes firmly planted on her hands, where they are folded tightly in her lap.

She hears, rather than sees, Jughead drop his body onto the drivers seat. She can smell his after shave and a faint whiff of nicotine. She feels the engine spluttering to life. She senses the tension and aggression radiating off him in undulating waves as he pulls out of the trailer park and onto the road that leads to Midvale.

Betty watches the blackened pavement through the mud splattered windshield, as it stretches infinitely in front of them. The broken white line appears and reappears in a calming, monotonous loop as the truck propels them forward.

They’re maybe ten minutes into their journey when Jughead abruptly shouts “Fuck!” and then slams his hand down onto the steering wheel so fiercely that the horn momentarily blasts through the eerie silence.

Betty half jumps out of her skin and makes a high-pitched squeaking noise, one hand coming up to latch across her throat to temper her surprise.

Before she has even righted herself from her shock, Jughead startles her again by dropping his head onto the steering wheel where his hands had been just moments earlier. The profile of his face not already concealed by the weathered metal of the wheel is contorted in pure emotional anguish.

Without falter, she reaches across the seat and let’s her palm fall soothingly across his back. Her fingers bunch the fabric of his shirt as she coaxes him back to a safer driving position. Or at least one where he has a visual of the road.

“Jug.” she whispers, her other hand moving to his leg to comfort him further. “Juggie. It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” he croaks, swiping roughly at his heavy eyes. “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. I’m just a fucking jerk. I’m so sorry. Oh my God I’m an asshole.”

“No, it’s okay.” Betty insists placatingly. “It was a stressful situation. You don’t have to apologize.”

But Jughead just groans at Betty’s deferential attitude and shakes his head fervently.

“Don’t say that. Don’t say it’s okay.” he begs. “All those years I listened to my parents scream at each other and as it turns out I’m just as bad as they are.”

Something fiery ignites in Betty then, and she speedily withdraws her touch as she sits up straighter.

“Pull over.” she demands.

Jughead is well on his way to completely spiraling into darkness and self-loathing but doesn’t hesitate to comply. As soon as the parking brake is set, Betty unbuckles her seatbelt and launches herself across the bench seat to straddle Jughead’s waist.

He clearly isn’t expecting such a move, because he wheezes and brings his hands up to his chest. But Betty is having none of it. She physically repositions his arms so that his fingers find purchase on her hipbones, skimming the lace of her dress.

“Jughead.” she say softly, threading her own fingers through his thick, dark hair. “You aren’t anything like Gladys or FP. You didn’t abandon me today, like they would have. You didn’t crumble under pressure. You held your ground.”

Jughead says nothing Betty can feel him gripping her even tighter as her words wash over him.

“You protected me.” she continues fiercely. “You protected Jellybean. You don’t have to be sorry because you did the right thing, today. You were good. You were brave.”

“Yeah, well.” he sniffles, rolling his eyes to avoid her complimentary words. “I still shouldn’t have shouted at you. I’m just so used to dealing with gang members and I really need to work on my communication skills.”

Betty breathes out an airy laugh. “We can agree on that one.” she smiles. “I’d ask if you kiss your mother with that mouth, but we both know you don’t.”

“The only person I want to kiss with my mouth is you.” Jughead admits quietly.  

Looking deeply into his eyes, Betty sees nothing but intense earnestness and raw vulnerability. It’s like his soul has been laid bare for her, and she can read his helplessness alongside his desire to be loved and understood. His need to do right by her; his worry that he’ll let her down.

Finally processing his spoken words, she drops her lips on top of his and there’s only a moment of hesitation before she feels him respond and apply equal pressure.

“Hey.” he says, pulling back just far enough that he can comfortably speak. “Do you want me to take you home?”

Betty smiles and captures his lips again for a short but sweet kiss. “And miss out on this date you’ve hyped up so much? I think not.”

Betty climbs back over to her side of the seat and the rest of the drive to Midvale is spent in companionable silence.

The ‘great little restaurant’ Jughead has chosen is a retro diner and if Betty squints hard enough it almost looks like Pops. It’s tucked away on the northern side of Midvale in a quiet part of town, and Jughead has called ahead to reserve a secluded booth right at the back.

For now, Betty knows they are invisible and safe enough to enjoy each other’s company in public, so she chooses to sit next to Jughead rather than opposite him at the table. He immediately raises his arm and allows her to curl into his side. He’s warm and he smells nice and Betty feels instantly happier.

“So what’s good here?” she asks, glancing down at the menu.

“What’s _not_ good here?” he smiles. “I don’t do bad food, Betty. Don’t you know that about me by now?”

They order burgers with cheese fries and two vanilla shakes, then Jughead dances his fingertips up and down Betty’s bare arm while they wait for their food to appear.

“Um, hey.” she says timidly, angling her body further in his direction. “Can I ask you something?”

He quirks an amused eyebrow in her direction, then nods. “Of course, Betts. You can ask me anything. Don’t ever feel like you can’t.”

“It’s just that you don’t really seem to like being a Serpent.” she says slowly, choosing her words wisely. “You don’t really hang with them, you don’t run jobs for them, in fact you sometimes seem completely at odds with them. So why’d you join in the first place?”

 Jughead takes in a lungful of air as he considers her question carefully, then exhales deeply. Her question has clearly triggered some unhappy memories for him, but she can see him trying hard to formulate an answer for her.

“I was just looking for a family, I guess.” he finally replies. “I was fifteen and Mom had just announced she was taking JB and moving back to Toledo. Dad’s drinking was bad at the time and maybe I thought if I joined his gang he’d care about me. I was stupid.”

Betty sighs and reaches out to tenderly touch his face. “Juggie that isn’t stupid at all. Craving love and somewhere to belong is the opposite of stupid.”

“At the time I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into.” he continues. “The whole concept of being stuck in a gang for my entire life didn’t mean much to me when I was a kid. The violence wasn’t as confronting because I thought I was invincible. Sweet Pea took me under his wing and he just seemed so impossibly cool. I thought if I joined I’d be cool like him.”

“You were always pretty cool.” Betty laughs. “Well I thought you were, anyway.”

“Maybe you were as young and silly as I was.” Jughead chuckles. “But initiation beat the silliness out of me. And I mean that literally – I had to run a gauntlet and let the Serpents attack me to prove my loyalty. Two fractured ribs and a broken nose in exchange for my leather jacket.”

Betty gasps in shock. “Oh my God, they _beat_ you? What kind of an organisation is this?”

“Uh, an outlaw motorcycle gang?” he deadpans in amusement.

A waitress in a hot pink uniform wearing a goofy hat shaped like a boat (for reasons Betty can’t quite understand) places their shakes on the table in front of them and promises to return momentarily with their food.

For a while there is silence while they’re both occupied with their drinks, then suddenly Betty releases her straw from between her perfectly pink lips and looks up at him with wide eyes.

“I saw you!” she says, like it’s a revelation. “The day before Jelly moved to Toledo you came to visit her and you were covered in bruises. Was that from the gauntlet?”  

“Yeah. It was.” Jughead admits, smiling wistfully. “I remember that day, actually. You were standing at your bedroom window. My whole world was changing so rapidly - I was losing my sister and I’d just begun what I thought was this new and exciting adventure with the Serpents. But there you were, little Betty Cooper. So smart and pretty and wholesome. And you looked so scared of me.”

“Wholesome?” Betty screws up her nose in distaste. “I wasn’t wholesome.”

“You sure were.” Jughead argues playfully. “But I promise I won’t hold it against you if you promise not to be scared of me anymore.”

“Pinky promise.” she offers.

She raises her hand and presents an outstretched finger to him. He laughs and immediately wraps his own finger around it to seal their deal. They stay that way, smirking and attached at their little fingers, until their food arrives.

Once Jughead has completely finished off his first burger and started on his second (because who just orders one burger nowadays?) Betty decides it’s appropriate to re-ignite their conversation.

Being this far away from the southside and all their troubles, Jughead seems so much more open. It’s like there’s been a weight physically lifted off his shoulders and he’s willing to be so honest with her.

“So when you first joined the Serpents did you like it?” she asks as nonchalantly as possible, popping a fry into her mouth.

 “I did. It was wild.” he says. “I liked being one of the boys. We drank, we smoked, we tagged buildings. The things we did were fairly harmless like smashing windows at Southside High or selling pot to the other students.”

Jughead reaches forward to steal one of Betty’s fries (having already consumed his own) and she playfully swats his fingers away. He immediately raises his hand in surrender and places it dutifully back in his lap.

“So what changed?” she asks, finally acquiescing and pushing her mostly empty basket of fries towards him.

“It became less harmless.” he shrugs. “Once I graduated school, the Serpents jobs escalated. Dealing pot became delivering Jingle Jangle, tagging buildings became breaking knee caps. Before I knew it I was running guns across the border into Canada.  I was in too deep and I knew it, but I was stuck.”  

Betty imagines that she knows how it feels to be completely out of control in life. For Jughead, one wrong decision has led to a lifetime of miserable servitude inside a gang. Meanwhile, her own stupid choice to leave her life savings inside a Cooper family bank account is costing her basically her entire future. They’re both broken and suffering, only in completely different ways.

At least, she rationalizes, she had the good fortune of growing up inside a loving family. Sure, she was an outcast at school. But at home she had a mother to teach her how to bake and a father to teach her how to take apart a car engine. Plus as an added bonus there was a sister to teach her about makeup and a brother to teach her how to jump off the roof of the garage without breaking any bones.

Jughead grew up with none of these things. Jughead grew up with a mother who scorned him and a father who, despite his efforts otherwise, was more dedicated to finding the bottom of a whisky bottle than to his own children.

Betty decides immediately that she doesn’t blame Jughead for joining the gang. She can never imagine being in a harrowing position where she has to make that choice, and she respects him for seeking out family where before he had none.

Jughead decides he’s still hungry (because of course he is) so he orders a piece of apple pie for them to “share” and another shake for himself. While they’re waiting for their second order, Betty decides to try her luck by skating really close to where she thinks the line might be in terms of appropriate questions about Jughead’s personal life.

“Can I, uh, ask you about jail?” she asks, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “How did you end up there?”

There’s abject silence that stretches on perhaps a little too long and Betty feels the heat of anxiety rushing up her face and brightening the tips of her ears a rosy shade of red.

“I…never mind.” she splutters. “I’m sorry. Forget I spoke.”

But when she looks up at Jughead his eyes are shiny and his mouth is smiling. He’s definitely not mad. If anything, he’s amused by her.

“Are these the types of hard-hitting questions you usually ask boys on a first date?” Jughead smirks. “I suppose this should be expected. After all, you _are_ the daughter of two journalists. You’ve probably got a survey for me to fill out at the conclusion of the night.”

“Jughead Jones don’t even joke about such things.” Betty lightheartedly admonishes him. “Naturally I ask all my dates to rate their jail experience on a Likert Scale. It’s both obligatory and best practice.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to mess with your high standards in best practice.” he grins. “So I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know. Go ahead and lay your questions on me.”

Betty grins back at him and sits up a little straighter, but doesn’t shy away from his invitation. She thinks perhaps understanding Jughead’s lowest moments will in turn help her to understand the nuances of darkness in his personality.

“How did you end up there?”

“I stole a car.” he replies without missing a beat. “Some of us knuckleheads decided it would be a fun Friday night to rob a convenience store over in Greendale. But something went wrong when we left the store and cops were in pursuit. Sweet Pea and Viper were separated from the rest of the Serpents and I thought I’d play hero by going pack to pick them up.”

Betty is so absorbed in Jughead’s story that she doesn’t notice the waitress in the stupid hat has returned with the pie. When the plate touches the tabletop she gasps and startles in fright, then lets out a nervous giggle.

Betty’s stomach is so full of burger and fries that she feels ill just looking at the food, but Jughead takes the time to shovel a large spoonful of dessert into his mouth before speaking again.

“I was riding my bike but I needed something large enough to carry three Serpents back to Riverdale, so I stole this shitty old Toyota Camry from the yard of a nearby house.” he explains casually. “The bad news is a cop saw me do it and I got arrested. But the good news is my foolish decision diverted enough attention away from Pea and Viper that they could escape.”

Betty’s eyes widen in shock and understanding. “So that’s why Sweet Pea looks out for you? Why you’re best friends or bros or whatever?”

Jughead shrugs again. “I guess. I earned Sweet Pea’s respect that night.” he says. “Prison was like an eye opener though. I was nineteen and still thought I was hot shit just because I was a Serpent. I learned some hard lessons in jail and it was like being doused in cold water. I realized that a gang was actually the _last_ place I wanted to be.”

“You said the Serpents were for life.” Betty says, pausing to roll her eyes as she watches him clean the last of the pie off the plate. “So how come they let you shirk out of active duties?”

“When I came home from prison my dad could tell I was different.” Jughead says. “In the end I just got lucky. _Real_ lucky. By that stage he was the Serpent King, and he was also going through a sober phase. At least enough to want to protect me. He decreed that I no longer had to take part in gang activities, so long as I still attended monthly meetings and wore my jacket.”

“Wow.” Betty breathes. “That’s intense. You should write a book about your life story. I’d definitely read it.”

“Well yeah. But you’re also biased because you’d be in it.” Jughead chuckles, before his facial expression turns serious. “So now you know all my deep, dark secrets do you find me less attractive?”

Betty licks her lips slowly and raises her eyebrows. “Rude of you to presume I ever found you attractive.” she deadpans. “But to answer your question, no. Quite the opposite.”

“Did you ever have a crush on me when you were a little girl?” he asks mischievously.

“No.” Betty scoffs, perhaps a little too quickly. “Get over yourself.”

“You did!” he laughs. “You so did! You’re totally blushing right now!”

The truth is, she’d always kind of hated Jughead. But she thinks she might kind of love him now, so she decides he never needs to know her previous low opinion of him.

Betty watches as he drops a handful of bills onto the table (enough to cover both their meals and a decent tip for Mrs Random Boat Hat) and then helps Betty to shuffle out of the booth.

They take their time to wander back out into the parking lot, and Betty suspects that neither of them are actually quite ready for the evening to end just yet - even in spite of the fact that they live together, so their date will inevitably end with them both in bed together.

Somehow it’s just different being out in public together. Something mundane like holding hands in the parking lot feels so much more special when you can’t ever do it within fifty miles of you own house.

“Can I take you somewhere and show you something?” he asks her, his voice suddenly quiet and nervous.  

“I’d love that.” Betty smiles, standing on tiptoe to place a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth.

Jughead drives them north perhaps another few miles, and they end up at a secluded lake set out in a large stretch of park. One end has been set up as a summer camp, and Betty can see the twinkling lights glimmering from within the cabins closest to the water. The other end of the space is overgrown with vegetation and reminds Betty a little of Sweetwater River.

They take off their shoes and sit side-by-side on the rocks, allowing the cool water to wash over their feet and ankles. The moon is a glittering crescent both above and below them as it reflects on the lake’s unmoving surface.

“Here’s the deepest of all my secrets. I came here for camp one year when I was eleven.” Jughead says, temporarily disrupting the pristine stillness. “It was actually the only time my parents had their shit together enough for me to attend a summer camp. I hated it at the time but looking back now I wish I’d given it more a chance.”

“You don’t really strike me as an outdoorsy type of guy, though.” Betty grins. “Is kayaking and hiking really your thing?”

“Well no, but it could have been, had I paid more attention when I was eleven.” he argues back.

Betty giggles and snuggles right into his side, and for a few moments they sit in perfect, companionable silence. Betty wonders if this is how everybody behaves when they realize that the lust they feel for another person is actually something substantially deeper. Love, or something very much like it.

Perhaps Jughead is thinking something similar, because when he speaks it is with reverence.

“I’m really sorry for the way I acted earlier.” he says.

Betty immediately opens her mouth to rebuke his admission, but he must sense it coming because even in the darkness he reaches down to playfully clamp a hand over her mouth.

“I know I already apologized but I want you to hear it again.” he says, letting his hand shift from her lips until it’s cupping her cheek. “I’m trying really hard to be a better person. I know you have to go home really soon but I want you to know that I care about you. I can’t offer you a future, but maybe you could come visit me again?”

Betty wonders if a heart can physically take flight from a body when it’s this overwhelmed with happiness. She can’t even believe she’s here in this moment with Jughead Jones of all people. Never in a million years did she ever expect this.

But then Jughead’s words wash through her mind and something jumps out at her – _I know you have to go home really soon._ It’s only then she realizes that she is yet to tell Jughead of Attorney McCoy’s job offer.

She knows he cares about her (like, he _literally_ just told her so) but she also knows he worries about the pervasiveness of the Serpents in their lives. They’re a toxic, unstoppable force and she doesn’t want to be part of that world anymore than Jughead wants her to be part of it.

She wonders if he will tell her no. She wonders if he will send her home. She prays that he doesn’t.

“Actually…about that.” Betty begins nervously. “Attorney McCoy sort of offered me a job today as her research assistant. It would mean I’d be staying here in Riverdale for the rest of the summer. I was wondering if you thought that would be a good idea?”

What follows is an intense and gut-wrenching silence. Betty can see Jughead’s face by the light of the moon but she can’t read it, so she can’t tell what he’s thinking. She starts to truly fear that her worst-case scenario is about to come to fruition, and Jughead is going to reject her.

Just when she is beginning to think all hope is lost, he slowly reaches over and grasps both her hands in his.

“There’s three things I want to say right now.” he says lowly, his eyes raising to meet her own.

“I…” Betty splutters fretfully. “Okay.”

“First of all, this is the best news I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” he says, breaking out into an excited grin. “Like honestly Betts, this is completely amazing and I would love nothing more than to spend the entire summer with you.”

Betty’s lips turn upward in a megawatt smile to match Jughead’s, and releases the air burning inside her lungs in one big whooshing sigh of relief.

“Secondly,” he continues, allowing stern emotions to simmer to the surface. “I need you to promise me that if I tell you things are getting dangerous, you’ll pack a bag and just leave town.”

“Of course Jug.” Betty nods, eager to appease his worries.

“No Betty, I mean it.” he says insistently. “If shit with the Serpents goes bad I can’t risk you getting hurt so you’ll need to go back to Palo Alto immediately.”

“I understand.” Betty says solemnly. “I promise.”

“Oh and thirdly,” he says, letting go of her hands and rising to his feet. “I need you to forgive me.”

Betty’s eyebrows furrow in confusion as her eyes follow the upward trajectory of his body.

“Forgive you for what?” she frowns.

“For this.”

Before Betty can even begin to comprehend what’s happening, Jughead has grabbed her and thrown her into the water. It’s July, but the water has a slight chill to it, much to Betty’s horror. She sinks into the pitch-black depths of the lake then immediately bounces back to the surface shrieking.

“Forsythe Pendleton Jones you’re a dead man!” she squeals, frantically pushing her wet hair away from her face as her body slowly adjusts to the water temperature.  

Jughead, for some unimaginable reason, seems to think this is the funniest thing he’s ever had the privilege to witness. In the end, his mirth is his own downfall, because he’s laughing so hard he doesn’t notice her wading close enough to reach out and grab him by the ankle.

He hits the water hard and manages to completely entangle his limbs with Betty’s so that she is once again momentarily dragged below the surface. But when they come up gasping for air, it’s together with their arms wrapped tightly around one another.

Jughead only waits long enough for Betty to catch her breath before closing the gap between them and capturing her lips with his own in a searing kiss. It’s intense enough to send tremors along every nerve-ending in her body and she’s instantly warm all over.

“This has been a really good night.” she swoons, suddenly heady with desire. “Let’s do it again tomorrow.”

Betty is giddy at the sudden sensation of Jughead’s lips tickling at her ear lobe as he draws her even closer to whisper in his ear.

“Let’s do it again all summer.”

Betty just smiles and say “Okay.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you feel like this chapter was clunky and disjointed, that's probably because it was only half of the original chapter 4. So, um, sorry about that! I want you all to know I read every single comment you guys leave like 15 times and appreciate them so much and they make me so happy. See you soon for chapter 5! For all you Nancy Drews out there, it's Fairly Probable that something big is going to happen in the next chapter (yes that was your clue...byeeee)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Here I am posting in the middle of the night because it's the only time I get to write haha. Before you start on this chapter PLEASE READ THE TAGS for this fic. Pay very close attention to the two last tags because there's going to be character death mentioned in this chapter and ALL subsequent chapters of this fic. 
> 
> Then before you freak out (and because a lot of you have asked me) please read and remember the THIRD TAG on the list because it's most important of all ;)

Riverdale is a sleepy little town in upstate New York.

Betty knows this because she’s called the town home for most of her life. But now that she’s a resident of California, and merely a visitor in Riverdale, she suddenly finds it to be anything but sleepy.

The two weeks after Betty and Jughead’s first date passes by in a blur. Betty enjoys working with Attorney McCoy (who insists she now call her Sierra) and more importantly she enjoys being able to financially contribute at the trailer. It’s a weight off her shoulders to know that two young people who don’t have access to a huge amount of money aren’t also forced to support her.

The newly formed Jones-Cooper household falls into a very easy routine. Some mornings JB drops Betty at the office on her way to Pops, other mornings Betty catches the bus. They take turns cooking meals (well, JB and Betty take turns whilst Jughead attempts and usually fails to contribute) and the comradery is effortlessly easy.

Despite the fact Betty’s job involves copious amounts of research and data collection, she is also happily able to interact with Sierra’s diverse array of clientele. The northsiders often recognize her as the sweet and pure youngest daughter of the late, great Hal Cooper and Betty quickly realizes this puts her in a unique position of influence.

She often finds herself strategically weaving information about the _Jones Tire and Auto Repair_ _Shop_ into conversation (“Yes just doing some work here for Attorney McCoy over the summer, oh and also helping out at that fantastic southside garage. You know the one? My dearly departed father – God rest his soul - always loved cars so much and the Jones Shop certainly knows how to treat a vehicle with respect.”)

Almost immediately, Jughead’s lonely little garage becomes a hot bed of activity as northsiders start crossing the invisible boundary of the railway tracks to bring their cars in for repairs and services. Betty quickly finds herself significantly less inclined to spend her non-work days searching for her Houdini mother, instead choosing to play assistant mechanic to Jughead.

They are extremely careful to never show any physical affection whilst working together, lest anyone untoward should see them. But it gives them a chance to properly talk and learn the nuanced details of each other’s lives.

Betty is endlessly fascinated by Jughead and the multifaceted layers of his character. The ways he can be equally soft and rough, the quirks to his personality, the wounded little boy beneath his tough exterior.

He’s funnier than she expected and she soon discovers his biting sarcasm and self-depreciating remarks actually mask quite a fun and goofy sense of humor. It’s not unusual for her to catch him singing along with the radio while he carries out a tire alignment or an oil change. It makes Betty feel special that he feels safe enough to show her this hidden facet of himself.

In many ways, he is a walking contradiction. He is openly scared of his propensity for violence, and the potential ramifications of his less than savory upbringing. Yet he is attentive to her needs, actually listens when she speaks and never allows himself to feel emasculated when she gets the chance to show him her skills under the hood of a car.

They spend the fourth of July at Sweetwater River with just Andy and Jellybean for company. Though they can hear the celebrations in town, and sporadically spot fireworks skimming the distant tree line, they are happy and content to just be together by the quiet stillness of the water.

It’s Bastille Day in France when Veronica calls Betty and squeals euphorically through the phone that Archie _finally_ popped the question. The proposal sounds like some stereotypical Archie Andrews sappy nonsense – down on bended knee beneath the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower whilst reciting a poem he wrote just for Veronica.

Betty secretly thinks it sounds hideous, and it makes her realize that her fantasies about Archie back in high school were just that - a fantasy. Her actual taste in men runs a little darker, and broodier, and sharper, and significantly sexier. Or maybe that’s just her specific attraction to one particular man.

As much as Betty is disgusted by Archie’s method of proposing, Betty truly is overjoyed for Veronica (who has been nothing but an amazing, caring and supportive friend to her for the past year) and promises to help plan the engagement party just as soon as they’re both back in California.

It’s not until the words leave her lips that Betty is suddenly jolted into remembering that this love bubble she’s managed to cocoon herself inside will inevitably soon burst and she will need to leave Riverdale to commence the autumn quarter back at school. The realization makes her feel physically ill, and she actively pushes the intrusive thoughts from her mind.

The following weekend, Betty and Jellybean decide to have a girls night out. Jughead is otherwise occupied with a Serpents gathering (something he almost always manages to avoid, except when absolutely necessary) and Andy is away on a fishing trip with his dad, so the girls pile blankets and pillows into the back of JB’s truck and head to the Twilight drive-in where they’re running a special screening of The Wizard of Oz.

It briefly triggers a memory for Betty of Jellybean shouting at Toni outside their trailer a few weeks prior (“ _be gone witch, before someone drops a house on you_!”) but decides she can’t let her ridiculous fears control her anymore. Especially because Jughead has assured her the Serpents will all be at the Wyrm at least until midnight.

The drive-in is a place that holds fun and happy memories in Betty’s heart. Though it was never an activity her mother much approved of, she can remember visiting several times with her father. She’d tuck herself between her brother and sister in the back seat of their station wagon and stuff her face full of twizzlers.

Jellybean reverses the truck into position, so that they can climb into the back and relax while they watch the movie. It takes Betty a little while for the anxiety that has taken up residence inside her chest cavity to slowly unravel and then dissipate completely. But eventually, she finds herself enjoying the movie and some quiet time with her best friend.

The tornado has just torn through a sepia Kansas and Margaret Hamilton is flying past the window of Dorothy’s airborne house when the low rumble of bikes is accompanied by an anxious murmur that ripples between the rows of parked cars.

Betty glances over her shoulder and notices at least two dozen Serpents filing ominously into the back section of the drive-in. Betty’s initial reaction is, of course, to worry. They’re not supposed to be here. It’s an especially odd choice for the gang to be in attendance at a classic children’s film, of all places.

But none of these Serpents look particularly riled up, nor over the age of twenty-five. Perhaps it’s just the younger crew coming to loiter for the sake of loitering.  

They are impressively foreboding in such a large group, with their matching black jackets and equally matching angry scowls. Almost unconsciously and without hesitation, Betty seeks out Jughead with her eyes and her heartbeat quickens of its own volition when she spies him hanging at the left flank of the pack with some of the boys.

He’s languidly leaning against his motorcycle, looking predominantly disinterested with the world in general. Betty feels her stomach coil hotly at the mere sight of him in his black combat boots, black jeans and his old beanie sitting snugly atop his thick mop of black hair. To anyone else, he must seem so menacing. But Betty knows now that he wears that beanie when he feels vulnerable and wants to be invisible.

He must sense her eyes on him, because he suddenly turns and looks straight at her. His gaze is burning and intense, and Betty is so shocked at having been caught staring at someone that her instinct is to rapidly avert her eyes.

It takes her a moment to remember she’s actually just been watching the boy she’s involved with (and possibly falling in love with, not that she will be admitting that out loud to anybody under any circumstances) and feels silly for her shy disposition.

She takes a moment to collect her thoughts and when she looks a second time his lips are upturned in an amused smirk – almost as if he has read her mind. She smirks back and rolls her eyes at him, then turns her face forward to the movie just in time to see Dorothy wander through the front door of her house as the land of Oz lights up in eye-popping Technicolor.

The status quo returns to the drive-in as the patrons all seem to come to the same conclusion as Betty (that the Serpents aren’t there to cause trouble) and also return to watching the film. Betty relaxes once more into the cushions that are propping up her back and sighs in contentment.

JB, who is snuggled down beside her and wrapped in a plaid fleece blanket in the bed of the truck, is so quiet Betty suspects she may be asleep. But just as Dorothy and her pals reach the front door of the Emerald City (“Bell out of order…please knock!”) she reaches over to poke Betty sharply in the side.

“Ow!” Betty yelps, though she isn’t really injured. “What gives?”

“I’m hungry.” Jellybean whines. “You’re my bestest friend in all of the land. Can’t you please go and get me a snack?”

“Get you a snack?” Betty chuckles. “Did your legs fall off, rendering you unable to walk to the concession stand yourself?”

“I worked an eight-hour shift on my feet all day. That’s kind of the same as your legs falling off.” JB grumbles her reply.

Betty sighs deeply and shakes her head, even as she’s grabbing her purse and climbing down from the back of the truck. It’s not really that much of an imposition and she was never not going to go, but JB doesn’t need to know that.

“You’re lucky I love you, Jelly Belly.” she scolds, suppressing another laugh.

“I love you too!” JB chirps back happily. “Get popcorn. And Reeses. Oooh and Jolly Ranchers!”

Betty scoffs at Jellybean’s bold list of demands, but dutifully heads off to the concession stand to laden herself with sugary candy.

She has to skirt around the edge of the Serpents pack to reach her destination, but she deliberately keeps her head down as she makes her way past them. She knows Jughead is there somewhere, maybe even watching her, but she doesn’t want to cause any trouble for him.  

“Hey!” yells a snarky voice. “Malibu Barbie!”

Betty’s jaw clenches anxiously, and she recognizes the voice immediately, but she continues towards the concession stand without pause.

“Didn’t you hear me Malibu Barbie?” the voice insistently calls after her. “Or should I say _Elizabeth Cooper?”_

At the sound of her full name, Betty halts her footsteps and turns around to come face to face with an extremely smug looking Toni Topaz.

“That’s right. I figured out who you really are.” she glowers. “I love how the Joneses are trying to portray you as this California girl when the truth is you’re a born and raised Riverdalian. Do you think I should tell everybody here that your daddy owned the newspaper and always used to write hateful articles about the Serpents?”

Betty’s eyes skim past Toni’s shoulder and seek out Jughead. He’s perched on the hood of a crimson red Mustang and even though he’s facing Joaquin, Betty can tell immediately that he’s also attuned to the confrontation taking place and watching her in his periphery. She feels much safer, knowing he has clocked her nearby, and becomes a little emboldened.

“You don’t even know me, so what exactly is your problem?” she snaps. “I’ve never done a thing wrong to you.”

“You’re right. You haven’t.” Toni agrees all too readily. “I’m just using you as bait to get a rise out of your lover. I don’t understand why he keeps insisting you two aren’t an item when you clearly are.”

So that’s it then. This is a test. But it’s not a test for _her_ , it’s a test meant for Jughead.

Toni is trying to force Jughead’s hand. Force him to come to her rescue, thus revealing the truth of their relationship. Understanding the game makes it marginally easier for Betty to play.

“Seriously?” she scoffs back. “So this is all just about your petty jealousy of some imaginary relationship that you’ve made up in your head? You’re sick, lady.”

Before Betty even fully understands what's happening, there are hands on her chest and she's being shoved backwards. She isn't expecting the blow, so she cops the full brunt of it and ends up lying flat on her back in the dirt. 

Leaving Betty no time to react, Toni is immediately hovering above her with a mouth turned upward in a vicious smirk. This is _not_ how Betty imagined her night would pan out. Somewhere amongst the background noise she can hear Judy Garland singing about the merry old land of Oz.

Once again, Betty's eyes flick swiftly to Jughead. He's still sitting indolently on the hood of the car, wedged between Sweet Pea and Joaquin. His body language gives away nothing, and he makes no move to help her, but she can clearly see a muscle twitching in his neck. 

She closes her eyes tightly to calm her racing nerves and tries desperately to remind herself that Jughead won't just idly watch on while Toni actually does her any real bodily harm. At least she hopes he won't. 

"Look at your little princess now, Jones." Toni crows triumphantly over her shoulder. "Are you going to admit that you care about her yet?"

Now that Jughead has officially been invited into the conversation, he turns his head fully to glare at them. He couldn’t look less interested as he slowly reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and withdraws a pack of cigarettes. He brings one to rest between his lips, takes his time to light it and then takes a long, slow draw of nicotine. 

"No, Topaz." he says indifferently. "Because I don't care about her. But I bet my sister will be pissed to know you're roughhousing her best friend for no good reason." 

Still clearly dissatisfied by her inability to get the reaction from Jughead that she so desperately craves, Toni sneers and then moves forward to place her boot firmly across Betty's chest. Betty gasps but finds herself otherwise paralyzed with fear.

"You call this roughhousing?" she sniggers. "You ain't seen nothing yet." 

Fangs, who is obviously the Serpents peacemaker, jostles his way through the crowd and ensnares Toni by the fabric of her low-cut halter top.

“Let’s not fight tonight, okay? This girl isn’t your enemy, T.” he implores her.  

“Go be a do-gooder somewhere else, Fogarty.” Toni snarks, pushing her friend away. “I want to see how far I can take this before Jones breaks down and sobs like a baby.”

Toni shifts her foot from Betty’s chest all the way up to her face and applies enough pressure that one side of Betty’s head is forced against the ground. The gravel begins painfully indenting on her cheek and forehead, and a high-pitched ringing sound echoes in her ear.

“Come on, northside bitch.” Toni grins sadistically. “If you cry then maybe _he_ will too.”  

Betty’s breathing comes in jagged bursts but she consciously wills herself to remain calm. It’s an irrational fear but with her head tilted this way her right ear is fully exposed and she can’t stop thinking about poor Meredith. Does Toni have a knife? Please don’t let Toni have a knife.

 _No tears in front of this psychopath_ , she reminds herself. _No tears, no tears, no tears_.

She’s not protecting herself here, she’s protecting Jughead. And she knows she has to be strong. She physically bites down on her tongue to prevent herself from screaming out for him.

Within seconds, her mouth begins to fill with blood.

“This is weird.” she hears Sweet Pea say amusedly somewhere outside her current line of vision. “Why is Toni so obsessed with you, Jug?”

“I guess I’m just a good looking guy.” Jughead laughs, and he sounds so casual about the whole thing that Betty thinks maybe she could die.

“What do you say, boys? Should I slash her pretty face Black Dahlia style?” Toni asks leeringly.

“Go right ahead.” Jughead shrugs. “But just so you know, my sister is coming over here right now and she looks really fucking mad.”

Instantly, the pressure on Betty’s face is alleviated as Toni removes her foot and braces herself for a fight with an absolutely irate Jellybean Jones.

Not wasting another moment, Betty scrambles to a sitting position and cradles her aching face with the palms of her hands. Jellybean hooks her arms underneath Betty’s shoulders and drags her to her feet before spinning on her heel to shoot daggers at Toni.

“You nasty piece of trash!” she screams furiously. “Why the hell would you do this? You’re seriously unhinged. Stay away from Betty or you’ll regret it.”

For a moment, it really looks like Toni is going to continue this conflict. After all, a threat from an eighteen year old non-Serpent probably isn’t overly terrifying. But then she glances over at the trio of boys sitting on the Mustang and can see that they’re all laughing at her.

“What did Topaz think was going to happen here?” Joaquin asks jovially, nudging Jughead’s arm. “Did she actually think you were going to jump in and save the little blonde chick?”

“No idea.” Jughead sniggers in reply. “But you have to admit this is pretty entertaining.”   

Realizing that her power play has backfired and she really just looks foolish, Toni raises her hands in surrender and takes a step backward.

“Fine. Whatever.” she rolls her eyes. “This whole place blows tonight anyway. I’m outtie.”

Without another word she turns and storms out of the Twilight’s lot. The Serpents turn their heads collectively in a mildly creepy way and silently watch her exit through the front gate before a couple of the girls also gather their things and scamper after her.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” booms the Wizard of Oz on the screen behind them.

Betty lets out a shuddering breath, now that the risk of actual physical danger has been averted, and allows Jellybean to wrap her up in a tight embrace. She can literally feel her best friend’s heart hammering in her chest, and she’s sure hers is doing the same.

“Shame on you, Jughead.” Jellybean spits venomously at her brother. “You were just going to sit there and watch Toni hurt Betty? If I was you, I wouldn’t bother coming home tonight.”

Betty feels utterly ill. She removes herself from Jellybean’s hold but keeps her eyes firmly on the ground. Of course she understands why Jellybean is angry and she knows that she should be too. Jughead is behaving like a total ass.

But she knows. She understands. It’s just an _act_. He’s keeping them both safe.

She also knows that if she looks up, the absolute depth of her true feelings will be plastered across her face for all and sundry to witness. The last thing she’s going to do is betray Jughead, even as the skin on her face thrums painfully. Instead, she laces her fingers with Jellybean’s and tugs her away.

“Please can we just leave?” she whispers hoarsely.

“Of course, Betts.” JB replies quietly, protectively throwing an arm across Betty’s shoulder before raising her voice to speak to the entire Serpent congregation.

“You snakes should all be ashamed of yourselves.” she announces. “This is exactly why I never wanted to become a Serpent. You guys are just jerks.”

It takes less than fifteen minutes for them to pack up the blankets and drive back to Sunnyside. Betty is mute the entire time, save the occasional sniffle as she continues to hold her tears back. Maybe she’s gone into shock just a little, because her hands are trembling even though it’s July and the evening air is still warm.

It’s not that she ever really believed she was in true danger – not with Jughead right there. It’s that nobody has ever manhandled her like that before. Nobody has ever threatened to harm her purely for the fact that she exists in the world. It reminds her how little she actually understands about life inside a gang, and how she’s even more of an outsider here than she ever was on the northside.

Jellybean, on the other hand, is extremely vocal. The entire journey back to the trailer is littered with indignant cries of “that wench Toni Topaz needs a good ass kicking” and “my coward brother is on my shit list I’m so furious at him” and “I can’t even believe that just happened, those Serpents are scum”.

Once they’re safely inside and the door is deadbolted shut, Betty watches in stunned silence with her arms wrapped around her own waist as Jellybean wedges a chair underneath the doorknob. It’s now basically impossible to open from the outside without at least inflicting some kind of damage upon the door and Betty wonders if she’s doing this because they’re in danger of another attack from Toni.  

“There.” JB says smugly. “Jughead can sleep outside in the fucking dirt for all I care, but he’s not coming back in here tonight.”

Betty’s eyes widen as the penny drops and she comes to understand that Jellybean is actually locking _Jughead_ out of the trailer, not Toni Topaz or the other Serpents. Betty is vehemently opposed to such an action, but thirteen years of friendship tell her that there’s no point in arguing because Jellybean never backs down from a fight with her brother.

“You don’t have to do that, Jelly.” Betty protests weakly, despite her own resignation that the chair will remain in place.

“Yes. Yes I do.” Jellybean snaps, stomping into the small kitchen to boil water on the stove. “He was a pig tonight. I can’t believe he sat there and let Toni hurt you. I’ll never forgive him. Do you want some tea?”

“Um, no.” Betty sighs, really not interested in hearing anymore of Jellybean’s ranting. “I’m just going to go to bed.”

Betty shuts herself in her room and strips out of her clothes, then tugs one of Jughead’s well-worn cotton shirts over her head. It smells like him and brings her both comfort and anxiety. She turns off the lamp and curls up in the middle of their bed, listening to Jellybean banging around in the kitchen and then eventually flicking off the lights in the living room and retiring to her own bedroom.

In the darkness, Betty feels cold and alone. The sensation of Toni’s boot still ghosts along her cheekbone, where a light purple bruise has now nicely formed. The other side of her face (the one that was forced into the dirt) is also sporting a few surface cuts, and she knows they’ll be harder to hide with makeup.

She reaches for her phone and the screen illuminates to inform her that it’s 11.34pm and she has no new messages. She wonders where Jughead is. She wonders if he’s wondering about her, too. She hopes he is okay.

She also wonders if it will always feel like this. If this is the man she wants to spend her life with (and she heavily suspects he is) then is she destined to spend countless nights this way? Lying alone in the dark, scared and worried, waiting for her Serpent to return to her embrace?

Just after midnight, when the stillness of the night means there’s less background noise to interfere with Betty’s hearing, she registers that someone wearing boots is climbing the three stairs to the front porch of the trailer. Her stomach is utterly knotted with anxiety as she listens intently, bunching the blanket inside her tense fists.

There’s the jingling of keys, metal pressing inside a keyhole, the click that denotes the cylinder turning inside a lock, then a surprised grunt and the brief scraping of a metal chair leg against the floor.

“What the actual fuck? God damn it, Bean.”  

Realizing it’s Jughead at the door, Betty is instantly awash with relief. She springs from the bed and races down the hall on her bare feet to hastily relieve the chair of its sentinel duties. She swings the front door wide open in eager anticipation, but is surprised to be greeted by the sight of Jughead’s retreating back.

He stops immediately as soon as he hears the door open, and when he turns to look over his shoulder Betty is once again confronted by the anguish on his face. It’s the same anguish she saw that night of their first date when they were driving to Midvale and it makes her blood run cold.

“Juggie where are you going?” she gasps, reaching out an open palmed hand to him.

“I thought…” he starts, his voice small and weak. “You locked me out? I don’t blame you. I deserve to be locked out. I’ll go crash on Sweet Pea’s couch. I’m so sorry if I woke you. Go inside and rest, okay?”

“What? No.” Betty says confusedly. “The chair was Jellybean’s doing. Come inside please.”

This time, she actually steps forward far enough that she can latch her fingers onto his shirt and attempts to pull him towards her. He resists, his face contorting in desolation, and Betty realizes he is actually crying.

It’s incredibly endearing and her heart is truly breaking for him, but she also knows this is not the place for him to have such a moment.

“Juggie you have to come inside before someone sees you.” she says more firmly this time.

He just shakes his head and let’s the tears roll in heavy droplets down to the sculpted line of his jaw. Betty’s eyes dart both left and right to check for any potential witnesses, but it appears they are thankfully alone.  

“Betty I’ve done a lot of really hard things in my life. I’ve copped beatings, I’ve committed crimes, I went to goddamn jail.” he says, pausing to hitch a breath and let out a shuddering sob. “But none of those things were as hard as tonight.”

Betty understands immediately and her own eyes shimmer with unshed tears as she looks upon this beautifully flawed boy she cares about so much. “It’s okay, Jug. I’m okay.”

“I was never going to let her hurt you.” he says desperately. “I was trying to play the game as smartly as I could, but I would never have let Topaz lay her knife on you. Hell, I probably would have killed her first.”

Betty smiles sadly down at him from the atop the porch. “Well I’m glad you didn’t because I don’t have enough for bail money just at the moment.”

“Please Betts, you have to believe me.” he pleads. “Please. Oh God, please.”

“Jughead, I do believe you. I never doubted you.” she says insistently. “Not even for a moment.”

He draws his bottom lip all the way into his mouth and she can see his eyes intently searching her face for any sign of a lie. After a few moments, she quirks an eyebrow at him, as if daring him to challenge her.

“Will you come inside now?” she asks. “Please?”

After a heavy pause, he nods and finally allows her to drag him into the trailer. She places a finger to her lips (because she’s in no mood for Jellybean to wake up and start yelling in that quintessential Jones way) and Jughead nods mutely in understanding. Then they practically tiptoe all the way to their bedroom and shut the door behind them.

Betty sits tentatively on the edge of the bed, reaching over to switch on the lamp. The exact moment the small bedroom is illuminated is the exact moment Jughead gasps and practically lunges for her. His face is mere inches from her own, but there’s nothing romantic about this gesture. His fingertips force her head this way and that as he inspects her injuries.

“Oh my God she did this to you?” he chokes. “Oh Betts. I’m so – ”

“If you’re going to say you’re sorry again please don’t bother.” Betty cuts in firmly. “I’m not hurt. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”

Jughead stands abruptly and paces back towards the door, muttering as he goes. “Christ. I need to fetch some ice. I don’t even know if we have any ice…”

Betty wants to call after him to let him know that it’s _way_ too late for ice to have any kind of positive effect on the severity of her bruise. Nor does it even need ice – it’s not even swollen.

But she also hears her mother’s voice in her head reminding her that “Coopers pick their battles, and that way Coopers always win” and she just knows there’s absolutely no way she’s winning this particular argument. The Jones children are nothing if not frustratingly stubborn.

Jughead returns moments later clutching an old bag of frozen peas and reaches for her immediately. She lays back against the pillows, allowing herself to wince as the cold plastic comes to rest gingerly against her cheekbone and the coolness begins to permeate her skin.

Jughead smiles wistfully down at her, from where he is leaning over the edge of the mattress. One hand holds the peas in place and the other gently combs through her mess of blonde hair.

“I hate that I put you in a position where somebody tried to hurt you.” he murmurs sadly. “I hate that our lives are so complicated. You deserve more than this.”

“Why?” she frowns, sitting up a little. “What makes you think I deserve anything other than this? Don’t I deserve something – or _someone_ \- that makes me happy? I’m exactly where I want to be so stop blaming yourself.”

Jughead offers a miserable little smile, but Betty senses that their arguing over her physical and emotional health is over for now.  

“The good news is that I think Toni really screwed up tonight.” he says, his voice taking on a sudden lightness. “She drew too much negative attention from the leadership with her toxic display of aggression and I don’t think she’ll be troubling us anymore.”

“Jug that’s great.” Betty grins.

“It’s all thanks to you.” he enthuses. “You kept your cool. You were so brave. If you’d so much as flinched, I think she’d have won tonight. But you were incredible.”

Without warning, Jughead bridges the gap between them and his lips close over hers. He tastes like stale beer, and Betty wonders briefly where he has been for the past few hours. But then his tongue slips into her mouth and she forgets everything entirely other than how happy she is to be here with him in this moment.

As Jughead’s hands leave her face and card down the length of her torso to her hips, the bag of peas slips and catches Betty awkwardly on the side of the nose. She immediately winces and pulls away, before bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Shit Betts I’m sorry!” Jughead gasps, snatching up the bag and tossing it onto the floor. “Who knew vegetables could be cock blocks.”

Betty rolls her eyes and smiles at his lame joke, sitting up all the way so that her back is leaning against the headboard of the bed and their eyes are nearly level. She reaches out a hand and touches it to his bicep.

“Speaking of cock blocks…” she starts uneasily. “Is that what happened tonight at the Twilight? I mean, is Toni so angry because she thinks I’m coming between the two of you? Were you guys a thing before I came along?”

Betty doesn’t expect Jughead to find her question hilarious, yet for some reason he does. He tips his head back and laughs heartily, before clearing his throat and sighing to actively calm himself down.

“Hell no. I don’t even think Toni is into boys.” he says with absolute sincerity. “Or if she is, she’s not into me at least.”

“Then why – ”

“Toni is a third generation Serpent.” he explains. “She was born into this life and it’s all she’s ever known. More importantly, she can’t understand anyone who doesn’t love the Serpents as much as she does. So she finds me threatening and it puts a target on my back.”

“She strikes me as an agent of chaos.” Betty mutters.

“That’s a great way to describe her, babe.” he agrees, even as a cheeky smirk crosses his lips. “But I don’t want to talk about Toni anymore if that’s okay?”

He’s watching her intently, waiting for her to give consent. As soon as she nods, he’s kissing her again. His hands work their way to the hem of her shirt and he momentarily slides his lips down to her neck as he forces the shirt up and over her head. She tugs at his jacket and he wriggles it down off his shoulders, then pushes it away completely so that it lands on the floor atop the bag of now half melted peas.

Using his body he guides Betty back down onto the mattress and then positions himself between her legs. She suddenly has the sensation of the soft pillows beneath her head and the hardness of Jughead’s lithe torso above her. It’s a mesmerizing juxtaposition but she longs to feel more skin against skin, so she shoves at his tshirt until he finally takes the hint and it befalls the same fate as the Serpents jacket.  

“Jug…” she moans breathlessly as he places a trail of hot, wet kisses down her chest and into the center of her stomach.

“I thought I’d lost you tonight.” he whispers, even as he continues his exploration of her body with his mouth and teasingly scrapes his teeth across her lace covered breast to gently bite her nipple.

“I thought you’d never want to speak to me again.” he adds, even as he strips her bra away.  

“That will never happen, Juggie.” she promises him. “I’ll never not want you.”

He reacts viscerally to her words, squeezing his eyes shut and bringing his mouth back up to meet her own. Betty’s hands are on his jaw, then his taut chest, then her fingernails are clawing down his abdomen and reaching for the buckle on his belt.

His own fingers dance along the elastic of her shorts, suddenly disappearing beneath the fabric. He finds her center and her body responds immediately as her hips buck underneath him and her body presses up into his.

“I…” she gasps. “I…”

 _I love you_ , her brain whispers. _I love you I love you._

But she knows it’s too soon. Too rushed.

Their emotions too heightened by the trauma of the evening to make this the ideal time to divulge the depth of her feelings.

So she chooses to distract herself by biting down on his bare shoulder and smiles as she elicits a guttural groan from his throat. He responds by hooking his thumbs into the waistband of her pants and pushing them far enough down her legs that she can wiggle out of them and discard them completely.

“I want you” she speaks into his mouth, finally finishing her sentence without telling a lie.

“Betty…” he murmurs sweetly as he enters her. “I…”

And perhaps it’s a combination of the lust and the joy and the depth of their intense connection, but she thinks perhaps she hears those same unspoken words die on his tongue.

_I love you._

They move in perfect synchronization, her hips drawing up rhythmically to meet his thrusts. His left hand never shifts from her face, his right hand traces patterns across her body. He’s so unexpectedly gentle with her every time they do this and it never ceases to amaze her.

She tries to watch him through heavily hooded eyelids and allows herself to bask in the utter softness of him. Not for the first time, she finds herself astonished that this wonderful human being was hidden in plain sight for almost all of her life.

But then she feels herself building, and her eyes flutter closed as her core ignites and she’s suddenly in ecstasy. She can feel him fall over the precipice right behind her, calling out her name and then kissing her hotly.

Later that night, after he has fallen asleep and is snoring softly on the bed beside her, Betty lies awake and just stares at him.

He looks so innocent as he sleeps, like neither the harshness of the Serpents nor his traumatic family life has adversely effected him. She knows now, with absolute clarity, that she’s _all in_ when it comes to Jughead Jones and she no longer has any choice in the matter.

And truthfully, she isn’t sure if that realization scares her or excites her.

It takes Jellybean a full week to forgive Jughead for what she perceives to be a gross indiscretion at the drive-in. But once she comes to share Betty’s opinion that Jughead was truly acting in their best interests by staying out of the conflict, a sense of harmoniousness settles upon the trailer once more.

Because the universe is due to cut them a break, Jughead turns out to be right. Toni totally overshot the mark with her overt display of violence at the Twilight, so the Serpent leaders reign her right in and Jughead is ostensibly left to his own devices.

For the first time, Betty and Jughead can stop constantly checking over their shoulders whenever they’re out in the world. They’re free just to be together. Or, as free as a couple can ever be when one half belongs in a criminal gang. They eat at Pops without caring who sees them, go on dates to the Bijou (simply refraining from holding hands until the lights dim) and Jughead even teaches Betty to ride his bike.

In mid-August, Veronica and Archie return from their European vacation and Veronica’s first order of business upon touching down on home soil is to organize a private detective to locate Alice Cooper. It’s a weight off Betty’s shoulders because it means she no longer has to spend her daily life wondering or worrying about her mother’s whereabouts.

She promises to pay Veronica back as soon as she can, but Veronica just shrugs off the offer and tells Betty to start planning her bachelorette party instead. The idea of a bachelorette weekend in Vegas is nowhere near as terrifying as the idea of moving home to the apartment in Palo Alto.

With every day that passes, Betty grows more content with her life in Riverdale. She enjoys her job and working with Sierra, she adores being able to share a home with her best friend, she likes hanging out with Andy and most of all she loves spending time with Jughead.

As a child, never in her dreams did she ever imagine she’d grow up to like and respect Jughead Jones as a human being. But never in her _wildest_ dreams did she ever imagine ending up in a version of reality where she’s in love with him. And yet here she is, and here they are. In it together, and Betty is starting to hope it’s forever.

Betty is afraid to cause any kind of ripples in her blissful little life, so she never talks about college or what will happen at the end of summer. After all, they’ve only been together less than three months and she knows it’s too soon to be talking of distant futures.

But at the start of September, Betty casually mentions to Sierra that she’s thinking of taking a leave of absence from Stanford and staying in Riverdale for the remainder of the year. Sierra struggles to hide her eagerness at the idea of her best and brightest member of staff sticking around to help her with her case load.

So with that, Betty quietly tucks her plane ticket into the bottom of the closet (where Jughead’s meager belongings have been overwhelmingly crowded out by her own – not that he’s ever complained about it) and she decides to forget it ever existed.

According to Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity, what goes up must also come down. For Betty Cooper, her happy new life crashes and burns spectacularly on September 9th at seven o’clock in the evening.

She is standing in the kitchen, dressed in her favorite cotton sleep shorts and her Cardinal sweatshirt, with her hair pulled up into a messy bun. After an hour of cooking, she is finally adding the finishing touches to the chicken pot pie she has prepared for dinner. It looks and smells amazing, even better than her grandma used to make.

Jellybean has the radio set to the local station that plays all the old rock and roll hits and is dancing in the living room with her hair brush clutched in her hand as a makeshift microphone.

Jughead has spent the day tinkering with his bike, so he’s taking a quick shower before they all sit down to eat. Even behind the closed bathroom door, he can clearly hear the music JB is playing. Betty knows he can because she can also hear him singing along.

The opening bars of Don’t Stop Believin’ filter through the trailer and JB squeals with delight.

“Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world.” she belts out, twirling into the kitchen and making Betty giggle. “She took the midnight train going anywhere…”

Jellybean reaches for Betty’s hands, and she immediately puts down the knife she’s using to dish up servings of pie so the two best friends assume the waltz position. Journey isn’t exactly the type of band you waltz to, but Betty doesn’t mind.

Just as the music reaches it’s crescendo, Jughead dramatically swings the bathroom door open and billows of steam surround him like a rock star on stage with a fog machine.

“Don’t stop believin’!” he croons dramatically. “Hold onto the feelin’!”

His hair is wet and slicked back, and he’s wearing his old navy sweat pants and a wife beater with his tattoos on full display, but Betty decides he’s never looked more beautiful and she’s never been happier.

He dances down the hall and all three of them are giggling and jiving in the kitchen when there’s an insistent pounding at the door.

So caught up are they in their own safe little bubble that the thumping scares Betty enough to make her scream. Jughead wraps his fingers around her shoulder placatingly, his face instantly serious and his eyes alert.

“Bean, are you expecting anyone?” he asks soberly.

“No.” JB replies, her voice equally serious. “Andy is in Philadelphia and won’t be back until Tuesday.”

The banging on the door commences again, this time intensified. Jellybean reaches over to switch off the radio and together they fall into nervous silence.

“Open up!” a deep, masculine voice demands. “Right now!”

Betty thinks it sounds like Sweet Pea, and then decides she must be right because Jughead seems to calm immediately and let’s go of her so that he can pad over to the front door and unlatch the lock.

As soon as the door is open, Sweet Pea pushes roughly past his best friend and barges inside.

“Jesus, Pea.” JB grunts, rolling her eyes. “Just come on in and make yourself at home, why don’t you.”  

But Betty can tell straight away that something is wrong. Sweet Pea’s face is normally set in a scowl, or at least shrouded in an unemotional veil. But this version of Sweet Pea standing in front of them is the complete opposite of aloof. He’s openly nervous and jittery. Mildly frantic, even.

He looks hard at Jellybean, then at Jughead, briefly at Betty, then back to Jughead again. It’s almost like he’s weighing up which of them is the best to speak with.

“Man, what’s going on?” Jughead asks with a frown. “Why do you look like a kicked puppy?”

“It’s your dad, Jug.” Sweet Pea says, clenching his fists in an act of sheer anxiety. “He’s been found.”

Betty gasps at the news, alongside both the Jones siblings. But in all truth she isn’t quite sure how she feels about it. Is she relieved? Definitely. FP has always been kind to her and she’s glad that he’s finally home. Happy? Yes, that too. Now FP can return to his position as Serpent King, protect Jughead and maybe even alleviate some gang pressures for him.

But she also feels apprehensive. For starters, four adults can’t live together in a small two bedroom trailer. FP isn’t even aware Betty has been living in his room and surely he will want his old bed back. Does this mean she will have to return to California now? The unknown makes her feel sick in the pit of her stomach.

“My dad?” Jughead asks, suddenly sounding less worried and more annoyed. “Where is he? The Wyrm? Ugh. How drunk is he?”

He snatches an old faded S shirt off the back of a chair and hastily pulls it over his head, like he’s preparing to head out with Sweet Pea and deal with his sorry excuse for a parent.

“Jug…I…” Sweet Pea splutters morosely.

“Christ he’s done something stupid, hasn’t he?” JB pipes up furiously. “What’s he done? Is he at the police station?”

Betty notices that Sweet Pea now has actual sweat beading at his hairline. Something isn’t right. This is surely out of character for him.

Suddenly a thought pops into her head and before she can stop herself from stepping into a situation that’s really none of her business, she opens her mouth and speaks.

“Where was he found?” she asks.

All eyes turn to stare at her, then. She shudders under the weight of everyone’s eyes. _Especially_ Sweet Pea’s.  

“At the river.” Sweet Pea answers darkly. “He washed up over on the Greendale side, about a mile south of our regular swimming spot.”

Jughead’s eyes go wide, then narrow in confusion, as he processes what he’s just been told.

“Washed – washed up?” he asks slowly. “What do you mean washed up?”

“He’s…” Sweet Pea pauses momentarily to steady himself. “He’s dead, Jug. Your dad is dead.”

For a moment there’s nothing but pure silence in the trailer. There’s no movement, no speaking, not even any breathing. It’s like they all just temporarily cease to exist.

Then suddenly there’s an awful gut-wrenching wailing sound. One of them is screaming and crying and falling into hysterics. One of them is losing their mind.

A moment later there’s hands on Betty’s body. Fingers clutching at her arms, her face, her shirt. Voices. People speaking to her.

“It’s okay Betty. We’re here. Just breathe.”

“Remember like Chic taught you? In for six, hold for seven, out for eight.”

It takes Betty this long to figure out that the person making the ungodly wailing sound is _her._ She’s having an intense panic attack. The worst one she’s had in years.

JB and Jughead are both in front of her, rubbing their fingers up and down her back, talking to her in hushed, soothing voices. But it only makes her scream harder. Only makes her feel more horrifically shit and like the worst human being on the planet.

These are two people who have just found out their father has died, yet for some reason _they_ are comforting _her._ She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her.

She fights hard against the waves of hysteria churning inside her brain and begins to ground herself by closing her eyes and focusing on breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth.

Just when she’s calmed down enough to open her eyes, there’s a second fist pounding on the door. Jughead whirls around to look at it, wide eyed and surprised like he’s never seen a door before. Then he glances over at her worriedly to ensure she’s suitably composed before making a move to open it.

It’s Sheriff Minetta, looking quiet and somber. He steps into the living room, gracefully removing his hat in a move that Betty recognizes as pretty standard for law enforcement who are about to deliver bad news. Their lives have officially become some sappy Lifetime movie.

“Good evening folks.” he says. “I hate to be the bearer of ill tidings, but it’s my unfortunate task to inform you that we believe we have located the body of FP Jones tonight.”

Hearing the devastating truth delivered in an official capacity causes Betty to commence quiet sniffly crying, but both the Jones siblings remain oddly stoic and unemotional. If anything, they seem to be silently communicating with each other using only their eyes.

The Sheriff requests that one or both of the Joneses accompanies him over to the Greendale morgue (because FP was fished out on their side of the river) in order to identify the remains. It’s such an awful, morbid request and Betty thinks she might vomit. There’s another pause while Jughead and JB stare intently at one another, before Jughead announces that he will go.  

Sweet Pea offers to remain at the trailer and “keep watch over the girls”, which Betty takes at face value as a caring gesture. The boy, for all his obvious faults, does genuinely seem to be both upset and concerned that FP is dead. But Jellybean declines, and Jughead instead suggests that Sweet Pea keep him company on the drive over to Greendale.

Jughead and Jellybean move toward each other and firmly embrace. They are so in sync it’s almost like watching the bellows of an accordion come together to produce harmonious music. Except there’s a sobering underbelly to this hug because Betty can hear Jughead whispering in Jellybean’s ear, and her response is a firm nod followed by whispers of her own.

Jughead briefly disappears inside their bedroom and comes back only moments later, wearing his faithful old beanie for unspoken emotional protection. Then without so much as a glance in her direction he is gone – piling into the police car along with Sweet Pea and the Sheriff.

The moment the men are gone, Jellybean moves to deadbolt the door and then also checks that every single window in the trailer is also closed with the curtains firmly drawn shut. Betty busies herself by wrapping up their dinner and placing it in the fridge for later (though she doubts anyone will have much of an appetite for a while to come).

With their tasks completed, the girls come together by curling up on the couch with their legs tucked underneath themselves.

“I’m so sorry.” Betty whispers. “I’m so sorry Jelly, for your loss. And for how I acted. It was so selfish of me.”

“It’s fine.” JB says, patting Betty on the leg. “I mean it. I understand.”

“What can I do to help?” Betty asks, her Cooper brain automatically slipping into planning mode.

“Just do nothing for now, okay?” JB replies quietly. “Keep your head down, don’t talk to any southsiders. Wait for Jug and I to figure this whole thing out.”

“You mean like arrange a funeral?” Betty asks, frowning. “I can help with that. I can organize flowers and talk to the mortuary and write an obituary and –”

“Betty. Stop.” JB says forcefully. “It doesn’t matter.”

Betty sits up straighter on the couch. “Of course it does, Jelly! What are you even talking about? Maybe you’re in shock. Please let me help.”

“I’m not in shock.” Jellybean scoffs. “I understand why you’re upset, okay? I really do. Your dad was amazing and when he died it was truly awful, so hearing about my dad has triggered you tonight. But FP Jones was no Hal Cooper. My dad was a fucking mess.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to grieve.” Betty argues. “You loved him. He loved you.”

“Did he? Did I?” Jellybean practically spits. “Sure there were times in my childhood when he was decent. But for huge chunks of my life he was drunk. Or gone. Or smashing the back windows of our house on Elm Street because he’d fought with Mom and they were both acting psychotic.”

Jellybean rises angrily from the couch, but Betty immediately reaches for her and grasps her hand. She wants to believe this is just JB’s coping mechanism. She knows everyone processes loss differently, and she just needs to figure out how to support her best friend.

“Jellybean…”

But Jellybean snatches her hand away from Betty’s fingertips and folds her arms coldly across of her chest.

“Don’t be condescending, Betty.” JB snaps. “Grieve for my father if you want. Hell, he always did have a soft spot for you. But don’t expect me to feel bad for him. If he loved me, if he loved my brother, he would _never_ have left us here in this situation. Never. I’m going to my room _please_ don’t follow me.”

Jellybean turns and storms down the hall then slams her bedroom door so forcefully that the entire trailer momentarily shakes like they’re experiencing an aftershock from an earthquake.

Betty sits wringing her hands nervously for a while, listening for sounds coming from behind JB’s door. Crying or screaming or anything in between. But there’s nothing.

She absently wonders if this is what it was like for Kevin and Jellybean when her own father died. Had they felt this helpless? How had they known what to do?

Eventually, she decides she can’t sit idly anymore. She makes Jellybean a cup of herbal tea and knocks quietly on her door to let’s her know that it’s sitting outside in the hall if she wants it. Then Betty thoroughly cleans the kitchen, washes the dishes and puts them away.

Still needing to keep herself busy, she moves to the small bookshelf in the living room and alphabetizes all of the titles. Then she removes the untouched cup of tea from the hall, boils more hot water and replaces it with a fresh one.

Finally feeling her own energy fading, she allows herself to lie down in the bedroom and rest. She cocoons herself in blankets and allows herself to truly reflect on FP Jones and the man he was. Or at least the man he was for her.

She remembers him taking her and Jellybean out for ice cream when they were small, the way he would fondly ask her how school was going and his infectious laugh. She also remembers how jealous she used to be when JB got to spend weekends with him on the southside. He always seemed somehow so much _more_ than Gladys. More special. More fun. More worthy of her time.

Betty allows herself to cry for him, but is also mindful that she needs to be quiet enough so that JB isn’t disturbed. She hides her face in her pillow as the sobs rack her body.

A few hours later, the front door is unlocked and then Betty hears the unmistakable sound of a chair scraping on the floor. Before she can even get up to investigate, Jughead is in the room.

A man on a mission, he wordlessly crosses the carpeted floor to the dresser and extracts a small black bag from somewhere near the back of the bottom drawer. He brings it over to the bed and drops it onto the night stand before climbing onto the mattress beside her and dragging her into the fold of his arms.

His skin is cold to touch and he smells like cigarettes and whisky. But she’s never felt more safe or comforted as he buries his face in the crook of her neck and inhales deeply. She suspects he is drawing the same safety and comfort from her.

“Juggie.” she whispers, turning enough that she can see the angles of his face. “Juggie are you okay?”

“It was him.” he whispers back, though his voice still has that creepy emotionless lilt to it. “I saw him with my own eyes. He’s dead.”

"I’m so sorry.” Betty replies, unable to bite back another sob (though she desperately tries). “Do they know what happened to him?”

"It’s okay, Betts.” he says, stroking her hair and placing a tender kiss on her forehead. “Minetta said they’re going to rule it an accidental drowning. I have to go in tomorrow and sign some paperwork so they can issue the death certificate.”

“Wait.” Betty starts, flipping all the way over so that she’s looking at him squarely now. “They’re not even going to perform an autopsy to firmly establish cause of death? Jug, your dad’s death is suspicious. They can’t just pretend like it isn’t!”

"The man was a notorious gang leader.” Jughead scoffs, and even in the dark she can see him rolling his eyes. “We live in a small town with limited resources. I don’t think Minetta wants to be anywhere near this bullshit.”

"But Jug…”

Betty can hardly believe she’s having this exact same type of conversation with the _other_ Jones sibling mere hours after the first.

She can’t understand why neither of them seem to care that their father is dead. The how or the why or even the when. None of it seems to have effected them on an emotional level.

“It doesn’t matter how my dad died, Betty.” Jughead sighs. “He fucked up. He fucked up and he left his children here to rot. Do you think I can ever forgive him for that? He’s directly responsible for everything that’s about to happen to us.”

Betty feels that familiar sickening anxiety coiling itself in her stomach yet again as she reaches up to touch his face. Jughead isn’t angry like Jellybean is, but he just seems so resigned to some kind of terrible fate that it makes Betty’s heart split in two all over again.

“What’s going to happen to us?” she breathes, almost too afraid to ask.

“Just think of it like we’re on the Titanic, baby.” he says darkly. “And my dad was the last lifeboat. So now we’re going to drown.”

In the morning, when Betty wakes up, she discovers that the scraping noise the previous evening had been Jughead wedging that damn chair underneath the door knob again and she really doesn’t know how to feel about it.

In the afternoon, curiosity finally gets the better of her and she opens the small black bag on the night stand. Inside she finds a full metal Beretta pistol and several magazines of ammunition. This time she _does_ know how she feels about it – a veritable mess of sickening dread.  

She understands that with FP gone, all that Jughead has built is under threat. But she doesn’t understand why that may put them at risk of any kind of physical attack. At least not enough that they need to be barricading doors or ensuring they have easy access to weapons.

In the end, as fate would have it, Betty does actually take on a significant workload when it comes to planning the funeral. The body is released to the family extraordinarily quickly (which Betty quietly seethes about because it truly does indicate that the sad demise of FP Jones isn’t even worthy enough of a thorough investigation) so she spends her days arranging for a simple service at the quaint little mortuary over in Greendale.

The Jones siblings remain creepily unattached from the entire proceedings. Betty never sees either of them shed a single tear.

Jellybean spends most of her time sitting quietly with Andy (who quickly returned from Philly upon hearing the news) or whispering with her brother in hushed tones. She eats the food that Betty prepares for her and seems genuinely grateful for the support Betty has offered, but she refuses to participate in decision-making for things she refers to as “menial tasks” such as choosing a style of coffin or selecting appropriate hymns.

Jughead, on the other hand, seems to sink entirely into himself so that he’s nothing but a shell of the man he used to be. He loses his appetite (which is the reddest red flag Betty has possibly ever seen) and the dark, haunted look in his eyes is ever-present. He smiles at Betty, kisses her, touches her lovingly. But he refuses to discuss anything serious with her like what he thinks may happen now that his father is gone, or how he feels about the whole ordeal.

During the day he mopes around the trailer, often with Sweet Pea by his side. At night, he wraps Betty up like a child with a teddy bear and clings to her until the sun comes up. Despite trying her best to offer him soothing comfort, the heavy bags under his eyes soon turn a sickening midnight color and serve as a telling indication that his sleep is severely interrupted.  

FP’s funeral is held on a cloudless Wednesday as the sun begins its afternoon retreat to the western reaches of the sky.

The mortuary is full to the brim with Serpents and the space is a literal sea of black leather jackets. Jellybean is given her father’s jacket to wear and surprises Betty by actually agreeing to such a show of family solidarity. Andy and Betty are two of the only jacketless exceptions, though they flank the Jones children in the front row.

Neither sibling chooses to speak during the service. Betty reads Psalm 23, her hands shaking and her voice trembling as she clutches the worn leather Bible in her hands. And then, it’s over.

There’s no need to attend a grave site, as Jughead settled upon cremation rather than burial (and Betty pretends she doesn’t overhear JB telling Andy that her father deserves to burn for his crimes) so after the event concludes the gang all heads back to the Whyte Wyrm. There is no official wake, however Betty sees this gathering as a quasi-celebration of FP’s life.

She is surprised to be allowed inside the inner Serpents sanctuary, if only for a few short hours. The Wyrm is exactly how she always pictured it – musty, dank and foul smelling. The entire place oozes toxic masculinity.

She, Jellybean and Andy are the only non-gang members in attendance at the bar so they deliberately park themselves in a dark corner where nobody pays them any attention. Fangs fetches them drinks (because he is somehow both the Serpents unofficial peacekeeper and their faithful drinks boy) but they are otherwise left alone.

Jughead is absorbed by the bustling center of the rowdy snakes, and they hardly catch sight of him or his beanie (which now seems to be permanently fixed atop his head, almost like he has regressed to his tweenhood).

Then suddenly the Serpents seem to move as one unified group towards a small stage. A man stands in the middle of the raised platform. Tall (though not quite as tall as Sweet Pea) with stringy brown hair almost as long as Betty’s. His face is etched with hard lines, his mouth framed by a beard and his nose adorned with a silver ring. Even from a distance, Betty is immediately struck by the lack of kindness in his dark eyes.

“FP Jones was born a Serpent, but he wasn’t born a leader.” he announces, in a rasping voice full of thunder and hate. “He was weak and he shied away from tradition. He should never have been elected king.”

“Christ. Does he have to do this today of all days?” mutters Jellybean, sinking further into her chair to try and make herself as inconspicuous as possible. “Dad probably isn’t even ashes yet and Tall Boy is already spitting all over his legacy.”

Betty bites down on her thumb nail to stop herself from crying. Not for the first time, it crosses her mind that FP’s death was no accident. _Idiotic drunk man accidentally drowns himself in river_ sure is a convenient and plausible cover story when it allows a sadistic psycho like this to take full control of a dead man’s gang.

“As your interim leader for the past six months, I have served you well.” Tall Boy continues. “I’ve negotiated us better deals, more than doubled our income and returned the Serpents to our former glory. I hereby pledge to guide the Serpents into a new era. We will rain terror on anyone or anything that stands in our way. In unity there is strength!”

To Betty’s horror, the entire room breaks out into raucous applause and similar cries about unity and strength.

“The King is dead!” shouts somebody near the front.

“The King is dead! Long live the King!” echo the rest of them in an eerily amalgamated voice.

Tall Boy crows like a narcissistic lunatic and raises his hands high in the air to soak up the atmosphere.

“Long live the King! Long live the King!” the Serpents shout as one.

“This is intensely creepy.” Andy says lowly. “Where do they think we live? The fucking Renaissance?”

Seconds later, Jughead pushes through the crowd and heads straight for their hidey spot. His face is void of all emotion, but his eyes are frantic as he slams his hands down on the wooden tabletop.

“You three need to get out of here.” he says, almost desperately. “Now. Right now.”

Betty suspects this is not the right moment to put up any kind of argument, and she also knows there’s nothing she can do to help Jughead when they’re literally surrounded by Serpents. So she just nods, grabs her purse and wordlessly climbs out of the booth.

Andy takes each girl by the hand (though Betty doesn’t know what kind of protection he can realistically offer either of them in a place like this) and Jughead herds them all towards the red paneled door of the bar as quickly and quietly as possible.

“Come with us?” she asks him almost under her breath, just as she steps outside. “Come home.”

“Later, Betts.” he replies, equally softly.

Then the door swings shut, and she is physically separated from the boy she secretly now loves.

They walk home in silence, the sun painting the clouds orange and pink as it slips below the horizon. A trio, still all firmly clutching hands, they shuffle down the dusky streets of the southside together.

It’s just over a mile to reach Sunnyside, but Betty stops half way there to shuck her heels and ease her aching feet. She grips her shoes in her free hand so tightly that her knuckles turn chalky white, and she worries about Jughead.

At the trailer, the television is turned on for background noise rather than for watching. Andy orders a pizza because they’re all too exhausted to even think about cooking dinner. They eat just the same as they walked (in near total silence) and Betty mutely worries about Jughead.

They take turns to use the shower. Betty stands under the stream of lukewarm water, letting the soap wash down her cold skin and disappear into the plug hole, and she allows herself to cry a little as she worries about Jughead.

At 9pm, they retire to bed. Andy and Jellybean together in one room, and Betty alone in the other. Betty wears an S shirt that smells like Jughead, wraps herself in a blanket that smells like Jughead and buries her face in a pillow that smells like Jughead. And she worries.

Just before midnight, the front door opens and closes, followed by the bedroom door, and then the mattress dips as Jughead climbs into bed beside her. She immediately turns and folds herself into his arms, but she doesn’t allow him to see her tears.

She knows she needs to be strong now. He needs her to be strong for him.

“Shshsh Betts, it’s okay.” he murmurs soothingly.

But Betty isn’t really sure if he’s directing the words at her, or if on some subconscious level he’s talking to himself.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” he pledges, peppering closed-mouth kisses along her jaw and down her shoulder to her arm.

“What about you?” she whispers back. “What’s going to happen to you?”

He moves back up her body to take her lips in a desperate, lusty kiss. His tongue moves in her mouth and it’s almost as if he’s trying to swallow her worries and take them on himself.

“Try to sleep now.” he says, as soon as he pulls away. “We can talk in the morning, okay?”

Betty sighs but nods and acquiesces. She rolls over onto her side so that he can spoon her from behind. She knows this is his favorite way to sleep and she just honestly wants him to get some restful hours of shut-eye now that the funeral is out of the way.

“You’re so beautiful.” she hears him breathe reverently just as her eyelids slip closed. “Thank you for being you.”

Betty Cooper awakes with a start, crying out and sitting up in bed. Her eyes drop to the digital clock on the night stand and her brain processes that it’s just after 4am.

It doesn’t feel like she’s been asleep for almost four hours, but apparently she has. For a moment, she isn’t sure why she is awake or why she is so filled with terror.

But then she hears it again.

Banging.

Someone or something is pounding on the trailer door.

This, she has come to learn, is _never_ a good thing.

Instinctively, she reaches her hand out for Jughead. To wake him. To seek comfort from him. Unable to find him with her fingertips, she glances over at his side of the bed and finds it warm yet empty.

Before she can even move an inch, the bedroom door flies open and then Jellybean is there in the darkness. She rapidly clicks the door shut behind her and then motions frantically for Betty to be silent.

“What is this?” Betty gasps, as quietly as she can manage. “What’s going on?”

Jellybean’s face is contorted with panic as she slides hurriedly onto the bed and clamps a hand down over Betty’s mouth to prevent her from asking any more questions.

“It’s starting.” she breathes, hot air from her mouth tickling Betty’s ear. “It’s starting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What'd you think?? Please let me know! I am but a mere slave to your kudos and comments. 
> 
> Just three chapters to go and I can stop spending the majority of my days thinking about this fic... 
> 
> Come visit me on tumblr too! @sadie-quinn


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! So...it's been a minute since I've updated this fic. To be honest I've been sitting on this chapter for a while because I don't particularly like it. I wrote it late at night while my toddler was sleeping and I don't think it flows particularly well. But I'm already half way through writing chapter 7 and I haven't updated here for like 2 months so I decided to stop tinkering with chapter 6 and just upload it. Without further ado let's get this party restarted!
> 
> (but first, a reminder that my chapters run very long - this one is nearly 12,000 words - and I edit them myself so if there's errors the only person to blame is truly me)
> 
> (oh and also this is my ever constant suggestion that you read the tags because there's character death in this chapter and both the remaining two chapters as well)

When Betty wakes, the sun is trickling in through the gap between the old brown curtains.

For a moment, she is completely disorientated and overcome by a strong desire to fall mercifully back into the realm of slumber. She isn’t exactly sure why, but she just feels so _tired._

There’s a warm body tucked against her back that she finds both comforting and grounding as she slowly allows consciousness to return to her body. With her eyes still mostly closed, she reaches a hand over her shoulder.

“Mmm what time is it?” she groans, her voice hoarse.

“Just after eight.” replies a discombobulated female voice.

The body behind Betty suddenly shifts position on the mattress and she picks up a whiff of what is an obviously feminine scent. It’s a shocking realization that she’s neither sleeping alone nor is she with Jughead. She gasps in confusion then immediately moves to sit up.

It’s Jellybean.

Jellybean is in her bed.

For a moment, Betty is just utterly bewildered. Her eyes shift from her best friend’s unamused face over to the closet and desk, just to confirm that she is indeed in the right bedroom. Jughead’s posters line the walls and her work jacket is hung on the back of the chair. Yes, definitely the correct place.

That’s when her eyes are drawn to the bare feet sticking out from behind the bed and she cranes her neck just far enough to see Andy sprawled on the floor. He’s sleeping, with a couch cushion under his head and the comforter from JB’s bed thrown across his legs.

_Andy_ is asleep on _her_ bedroom floor.

“My God, what is goi…” she begins, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her palm.

Then suddenly it all comes back to her - the night before and the Serpents appearing at the front door at 4am.

Jellybean had rushed into the bedroom and clamped a hand down over her mouth, then they’d huddled together on the mattress in the pitch-black darkness, listening in horror as Jughead willingly let the gang into the trailer.

Betty wasn’t quite sure how many sets of boots she heard padding across the threshold into the living room. Four, maybe five. Possibly more.

_“The boss wants to see you.”_

_“He’s sending you on a job.”_

_“Let’s go, Jones. Now. Right now.”_

Jughead put up no resistance of any kind. No arguments, no rebukes, no pleading. 

_“Let me go grab my jacket.”_ was all he’d said.

The bedroom door had opened then, momentarily flooding the space with artificial light, before rapidly drawing shut and throwing them all back into blackness. Betty had been up and off the bed in an instant, throwing herself desperately into Jughead’s arms.

His hands had briefly curled around her back and squeezed her tightly, before he pushed her gently in the direction of his sister.

“ _Stay here. Stay quiet. Stick together.”_ he’d said to Jellybean. “ _You know the drill._ ”

He’d looked in Betty’s direction then. It was so dark she could barely see the white of his eyes. But what she did see was unbridled anxiety, fear, sorrow and resentment. He reached out and tenderly touched her arm before snagging his Serpents jacket from the closet and slipping his pistol into the front of his jeans.

Then he was gone.

The Serpents all filed out of the trailer together and the rumbling sound of motorcycle engines filtered through Sunnyside. After a few moments, the silence returned and it was eerily almost as if nothing ever happened.

Betty had sobbed as Jellybean explained that she and Jughead had expected this would happen sooner or later (though they’d suspected perhaps a little later than the exact same night as their father’s funeral).

Tall Boy, as the newly elected King of the Serpents, was making an example out of Jughead for previously refusing to toe the line. Now that Tall Boy was officially in charge, Jughead would be utilized to his fullest potential and forced to work the worst of the jobs at the most inconvenient of times as punishment.

If he put up any kind of resistance, he would be severely reprimanded. Jellybean didn’t quite know how. The only true certainty was that Riverdale was no longer a safe place for either of the Jones siblings, nor anyone they associated with. But Jughead’s full cooperation would buy them time until they could figure out their next move.

Betty had been angry.

Angry that she hadn’t been informed and then forced to find out under such awful circumstances.

Angry that her boyfriend had essentially been ripped from her arms in the middle of the night with no prior warning.

Angry that neither Jughead nor Jellybean had even considered the possibility that she may also have needed to know what was going to happen.

“ _We honestly thought you’d be gone, Betts.”_ Jellybean had said. “ _School starts in less than two weeks and we didn’t think you’d need to worry.”_

After that, Betty was less angry and more sad. With FP’s death, she hadn’t yet had the chance to discuss the possibility of her staying in Riverdale instead of returning to Stanford. But clearly she was the only person in the household who was even quietly floating the idea of her living there longer-term.

So Betty sat in the bedroom crying while Andy and Jellybean checked and rechecked all the windows and doors were locked, then they’d all ended up together in the same bedroom (for the purposes of both safety and comfort).

Betty can’t recall ever falling asleep, though they all must have at some point. And judging by the stillness of the house, Jughead (who has now been gone for more than four hours) is still yet to come home.

“Wake up, Andy.” Jellybean grumbles, reaching a hand over the edge of the mattress to shake her boyfriend’s arm. “You have work today.”

Betty yawns loudly and mentally recalibrates. She doesn’t work at the office on Thursdays and would normally spend the day with Jughead at the garage. She knows for a fact there are at least three cars in the shop that need repairing and figures that would probably be the best way to keep her distracted while she waits for Jughead to return from whatever job Tall Boy has sent him on.

After a quick shower to wake her up, and a large cup of very strong coffee to _really_ wake her up, Betty dresses in old clothes and ties her hair up before walking the mile down to the shop on South Avenue.

She uses the spare set of keys that Jughead had given her to let herself in and turns on the radio to further blast her anxious brain into silence. Then she gets straight to work on replacing the brake rotors and pads in an old silver Buick.

Even with the caffeine coursing through her veins, she is tired enough that she is forced to work slower than normal. She is hyper aware of her surroundings, stopping every time she hears someone passing by outside in the hope that it’s Jughead, and pausing every few minutes to check if he’s messaged or called.

She finishes the Buick and briefly considers whether she’s hungry enough to eat something then decides food will only make her queasy so she moves on to the second car. It’s a slick looking Honda Civic but it needs significant enough work to the transmission that the entire engine needs removing. It’s the perfect task to prevent her mind wandering to dark and negative places.

The charming young woman on the radio has just given the 1pm news and weather report when Jughead shuffles quietly into the workshop. He’s clean shaven and wearing his work uniform, and to the untrained eye he really just looks like his normal self.

But Betty prides herself on the fact that her eye is trained when it comes to Jughead (then admonishes herself for how creepy that sounds – even only inside her own mind).

From all the way across the room, Betty can see the haunted look that’s made itself at home nestled amongst the icy blue of Jughead’s irises and the jet black of his pupils. It’s enough to make her heart skip a beat, and not in a good way.

“Jug!” she squeaks out. “You’re back! Oh my God I was so worried!”

She is hunched under the hood of the car, but the moment she spots him she moves instantly in his direction. She only makes it three steps before he raises his eyes to look at her fully and the sheer intensity of his brooding expression halts her in her tracks.

Suddenly nervous, she reaches into her back pocket to extract a rag and wipe her oily hands clean.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Where did they make you go?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Jughead starts lowly. “Not with you.”

“Jug.” she frowns. “I want to help you.”

“I’m serious, Betty. I don’t want Serpents business touching any aspect of your life.” he says resolutely, as if the matter is final. “Don’t ask me again.”

Betty fights a raging internal battle with herself. She _does_ want to ask him again. She needs to know. But she also understands he’s trying to protect her and that the man standing before her is incredibly emotionally vulnerable.

“Okay.” she nods, swallowing over a lump in her throat. “Um. The jeep over there needs a tire rotation.”

Jughead says nothing. He stares at her intently, seemingly conveying his thanks that she is willing to drop the issue. His eyes provide a silent apology that he can’t tell her what she needs to hear, because his words are perhaps failing him.

“You got it, boss.” he says eventually, before turning and crossing the garage to the red vehicle in the corner.

On any other day Betty would have made a sassy remark. Perhaps about the fact that in actuality _he_ is the boss in this domain. Or maybe she would throw a jibe about him finally acknowledging that she wears the pants in their relationship. But today she just bites her lip and turns back to the Civic.

They toil in complete quiet, save for the soft tunes emanating from the radio, on opposite sides of the workshop. Betty periodically steals glances at Jughead, but he seems wholly focused on his task. She grits her teeth and tries not to cry as she pours all her attention into bleeding her car’s brake lines.  

It takes Jughead less than an hour to rotate and align the tires, then he coughs loudly and disappears inside the small office at the back of the workshop.

Betty still has a significant amount of work left to go, which is interrupted once when the owner of the Buick comes to collect his vehicle and then once again when Mr Chandler who lives over on Maple Tree Lane drops off his car so it can be serviced the next day.

When the telephone rings, Betty is wedged snugly underneath the engine of the Civic so she tries to ignore it. But when the phone goes completely unanswered, and then shortly thereafter commences ringing a _second_ time, Betty growls and grudgingly slides the creeper she’s lying on back out onto the garage floor.

She adjusts her ponytail then stomps into the office, ready to let Jughead cop a good serve of her wrath. He’s sitting, slumped over his desk with his head in his hands. Betty isn’t entirely sure that he’s even awake.

“What exactly is it that you’re doing?” she snaps. “I’m unofficially your employee but I’m officially not your slave. I’ve been here working my ass off all day and the least you can do is answer the damn phone.”

There’s silence.

Jughead doesn’t respond.

Jughead doesn’t even move.

Betty frowns.

“Excuse me Forsythe, are you even listening to me?” she yells into the void.

Then he looks up.

There are no tear tracks on his face, but his eyes are red rimmed and sunken. There’s a hollowness to him; a brokenness. He looks like a wounded, lost little boy.

Betty has seen him cry before. She’s _proud_ that she has, and that he feels able to show his true emotions in front of her. But this is something else entirely. The boy sitting on the creaky old swivel chair opposite her is practically the shell of a human being.

“Betts, my head hurts.” Jughead moans, almost inaudibly.

“Oh Juggie.” she whispers.

She can’t even fathom what to do or how to fix this situation. She doesn’t know what he’s been forced to endure. No idea what he saw or what he did while he was gone. But her heart practically splits in two and she wants to weep for him.

She rushes around to the other side of the desk and presses herself against his side. One hand moves into his thick, raven hair, knocking his beanie out of place, and her other hand slips around his shoulder so that she can bring his head to rest against her stomach. 

After a moment, Jughead brings his arms up to wrap around her waist and draws her over the top of him until she is basically straddling him in the chair. He buries his face in the crook of her neck and breathes slowly and deeply against her skin. His grip on her is so tight that it’s at least partially restricting the flow of oxygen to her lungs, but she doesn’t dare move.

“Juggie I’m here.” she says. “I’m here.”

It’s not enough. She knows it’s not enough. But she doesn’t know what else she has to offer.

_I love you,_ she silently adds. _I love you so much._

She wonders what will happen if she confesses her love out loud. She wonders if he’ll say it back. She suspects that he will. But he’s emotionally wounded and she knows this isn’t the best time to test him.

After a while, Jughead’s breathing evens out and Betty guesses he has fallen asleep for real this time. It’s not the most comfortable position for either of them to be in, but she knows without a shadow of a doubt she’d rather gnaw off her own arm than shift and disturb him.

Jughead is offered mere minutes of peacefulness before the shrill cacophony of the telephone fills the office once more and physically jolts him upright.

Half in a daze and acting on instinct, he reaches for the receiver.

“Forget the phone, Jug.” Betty encourages gently, pushing his hand away from the desk. “Let’s go home, okay? You need to rest.”

Jughead sighs and shakes his head. “I’m sorry I’m putting you through all this.”

“It’s okay.” she assures him placatingly. “Come on, let’s go.”

As they pack up the shop for the day, lock the doors and switch off the lights, Betty can see something dark and foreboding has settled in Jughead’s mind. It’s almost as if a thick blanket of sin and sorrow has lowered itself upon him. It weighs heavy on him and makes him almost unreachable.

Betty had walked there earlier in the morning, and now Jughead has the bike, but she watches him hesitate for a moment before offering her a ride and just that one small shift in his personality is enough to almost break her heart.

She clings to his back the entirety of the short distance to Sunnyside, gnawing on her bottom lip and trying desperately to think of a way through this uncharted territory; a veritable quagmire of depression and hopelessness.

That night, JB works the evening shift at the diner so they have the trailer to themselves. Betty whips up a chicken casserole for dinner, but Jughead barely touches the food on his plate. Betty says nothing and simply offers a tight-lipped smile when he excuses himself from the table and goes to sit silently on the couch for no foreseeable reason.

Filled with trepidation, she follows him and keeps that simpering smile plastered on her face. She tries to keep things light and suggests they watch a movie (even offers to let Jughead pick) but he shrugs off her suggestion and instead takes himself to bed.

Betty allows herself to cry a little as she cleans up the kitchen, washes the dishes and takes a quick shower. She can’t even imagine what Jughead must be feeling or what the Serpents forced him to do. It’s an unspeakable tragedy on its own, but far more severe when coupled with the fact FP Jones is still only freshly departed from the world.

Betty leaves the porch light on for Jellybean, then creeps into the bedroom and apprehensively slips into the bed.

Jughead is lying very still and facing the window. He shifts his hand from near his waist to up beside his face when Betty joins him under the covers, so she knows he’s still awake. But he makes no move to turn or reach out to her.

After a few minutes, Betty feels like staring at his back is a deliberate slight against her and she sighs deeply then rolls over herself so that she’s facing the door.

For the first time the entire summer, and with their backs to each other, she feels like she’s sleeping next to a stranger.

The following day, Riverdale awakes to an unusual September heat wave. 

The temperature reaches well above ninety degrees long before the sun even reaches its peak in the sky, and the humidity is nothing short of oppressive. 

Jughead is still somber and tired (for reasons he continues to insist he won't discuss with Betty or anyone else) so he camps out on the old couch in the living room and lets a DVD of season 2 of The Office run on an endless loop. 

JB has other plans for how the day will go. She drags a small inflatable kiddie pool out from behind the back of the trailer but can't seem to locate the air pump, so she and Betty sit on the patchy grass and take turns to blow air through the little plastic valve. 

Once the job is finally done, the pool is filled with tepid water from the garden hose of the trailer next door and the girls head inside to change into their swimsuits. 

They leave the front door wide open to let the mostly non-existent breeze inside. It's not much, but they hope it will help to cool down Jughead, who is still on the couch but now solidly napping. 

Not shutting and locking the door is an action that Betty doesn't recognize as a mistake until she's standing in the kitchen in a (thankfully) modest black swimsuit preparing a pitcher of lemonade and she hears someone cough. 

When she looks up and sees Sweet Pea, Fangs, Joaquin and Toni all hovering over the form of her sleeping boyfriend, she lets out an involuntary scream and drops the glass pitcher on the floor. It remains mercifully intact, but the contents gush all over the worn linoleum. 

The moment a sound of distress passes between Betty's lips, Jughead's eyes spring open and he sits starkly upright. His eyes seem to skim straight past the Serpents, almost as if he somehow expects them to be there, and immediately fall on Betty. 

Only once he is satisfied that she is neither hurt nor in danger, does he turn his face back to the gang. He doesn't look afraid, but he clearly isn't happy to see them either. 

"Hey guys." he says, his voice so very weary. 

Jellybean chooses that moment to come running out of her bedroom. She's dressed in a purple bikini to match the streaks of color in her hair, and nearly crashes straight into the back of Betty as she comes careening down the hall. They both manage to pull up just in time to prevent an accident involving the spilled lemonade becoming a makeshift slip-and-slide. 

"Why are you people always so jumpy?" Toni sniggers. "Maybe you should consider valium." 

"Maybe you should consider not barging into other people's homes uninvited." Jughead counters without missing a beat. 

Betty is starting to see this pattern clearly emerging with Jughead. He has no problem metaphorically lying down and letting the Serpents walk all over him, but when any of them threaten either Jellybean or herself he bites back immediately.

Betty doesn't know if she should be happy he still has some fight left in him, or disappointed that he seems to have given up on himself so quickly.

Toni laughs a little and shakes her head, as if Jughead has told some sort of frivolous joke, and then reaches for Jughead's jeans where they lie slumped on the brown carpeted floor. 

"Get dressed." she orders, tossing the pants in his direction. "Boss has a job for you."

"Of course he does." Jughead sighs, but he makes no further comment as he rakes the denim up over his hips and stands to pull his boots on. 

"Where's your jacket?" Toni scowls. "In your room? I'll go and get it." 

She moves to head down the hall, but Sweet Pea is closer to the bedrooms and raises a hand to gently shove her back. Toni truly looks annoyed, but Sweet Pea is significantly taller and more solidly built than her. Even without their physical disparities, his menacing look is enough to quickly halt her complaints. 

"It worries me how eager you are to get into Jug's bedroom, Topaz." he grunts, rolling his eyes in admonishment. “I’ll go instead." 

Then he turns and heads down the hall. 

The second Sweet Pea disappears into the bedroom, Jughead glances up at Betty and they share a terrified look via the kitchen pass-through. It lasts no longer than a brief moment yet it conveys so much, so very clearly: _this is bad - very bad_.

That room is literally full of Betty's things, and none of it is in any way hidden. Her clothes are all over the place; her makeup scattered across Jughead's desk. She's even fairly sure she left her bra on the bed when she was changing into her suit. 

In hindsight, it's a stupidly obvious fuck up. Now that the Serpents are likely to be coming and going from the trailer at any given time of the day or night, they surely should have been smart enough to at least try to conceal the evidence that Betty is sharing a bedroom with the _other_ Jones sibling. 

Betty grits her teeth and holds her breath, waiting for the impending onslaught of doom. 

But instead, Sweet Pea simply emerges from the bedroom moments later in total silence with a decidedly blank expression on his face. He doesn't so much as glance in Betty's direction as he passes by. He simply tosses Jughead the black leather jacket and mutters "let's go - Tall Boy is waiting." 

Sweet Pea obviously now knows that they're together in some shape or form (or at least he has a pretty good inkling) but she has no idea how he's going to react. Does his loyalty to the Serpents beat out his status as Jughead's best friend? She needs some sort of guidance. Is she supposed to be afraid?

Betty tries unsuccessfully to meet Jughead's eyes again as the gang members all begin to take their leave from the trailer. He was the one who was always so afraid of someone finding out about them, yet now he remains aloof. 

Watching him ride away, flanked by bikers, does nothing to alleviate the sickening anxiety churning in the pit of Betty's stomach.

"Well that was needlessly dramatic." Jellybean finally says. 

"I..." Betty splutters. "What do we do now?" 

"This is just the way it's going to be from now on." Jellybean shrugs. "This is how it always was with Dad, even back when he rode with the Toledo Serpents. We couldn't just sit around waiting for him to return, so we had to just keep living our lives as if nothing was different. You get used to it after a while."

"But Sweet Pea." Betty splutters again, wringing her hands nervously. "He must -"

"Juggie will deal with it." Jellybean cuts in resolutely. "Here, help me clean up this lemonade then we'll go cool off in the pool okay?" 

Betty wants to argue with her best friend, but she knows it's futile. Besides, sitting around stressing about Jughead is only going to give her a stomach ulcer.

When the kitchen is sufficiently cleaned and the pitcher refilled, Betty and Jellybean grab towels and head back outside. 

The pool is barely big enough for one adult, let alone two, so Betty elects to drag over a plastic chair and sits with her ankles dangling over the inflatable edge to splash in the water. 

They deliberately talk about anything and everything other than Jughead or the Serpents. They discuss JB's options for the future (she has decided to hold off on college for a year while she saves some more money), exactly how ostentatious Veronica's wedding is actually going to be (the general consensus being: very) and place bets on the number of boys Kevin has hooked up with over in London (Betty thinks four but Jellybean guesses nine). 

After a while they swap places. Jellybean lounges on the chair to tan and Betty lies on her stomach in the pool, letting the shallow water dance across her back. It's both cathartic and grounding.  

In the late afternoon, they pull denim shorts and cotton tshirts over their swimsuits and walk to Pops to share burgers and milkshakes. Jellybean sits opposite Betty in a booth and confesses how nervous she is about Andy moving to Philadelphia to attend Drexel, even though they'll only be a couple of hours apart. 

Betty tries not to think about Stanford and the seemingly insurmountable distance between the Bay area and upstate New York. Listening to JB air her fears about long distance relationships leaves Betty feeling nothing but relief at her decision to forgo school for a while and remain in Riverdale. Given the huge upheavals in Jughead's recent life, she knows that the best place to be for the time being is exactly by his side. 

The girls meander back to Sunnyside against the backdrop of pink hues in the dimming sky. A strawberry shake in a large paper cup gets passed between them as they cut through the cemetery and skirt along the edges of Fox Forest. 

With sun kissed skin and a full belly, Betty is almost feeling better about the world in general. She can see now that Jellybean was right all along - living their lives is the only plausible solution while Jughead is away with the Serpents. It's the only thing that will get them through.

"Oh holy shit where have you guys been?" screeches Sharna almost as soon as they slip through a hole in the rusty chain-link fence at the back of the trailer park. 

Betty is still pushing her way clear of the fence when she looks up in the half light and sees both Sharna and Nova running frantically towards them. They're dressed in their Serpents leather, even in the unbearable heat. 

"We were at Pops." Jellybean says, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "Why?" 

"There's been an incident." Nova says breathlessly, coming to a stop in front of them. "Some of the Serpents were out on a job and apparently it went wrong." 

The contents of Betty's stomach instantly turns thick like mud and she feels unnerved all the way to her very core. 

Jughead. Something could have happened to Jughead. 

"What kind of wrong?" Jellybean gasps. 

"We don't exactly know." Sharna says. "There's a gathering outside old man Thomas Topaz's trailer so we're headed there now." 

"But we're hearing chatter that one of the boys has been killed." Nova adds anxiously, her face flushed. 

That piece of information is enough to cause Betty's vision to blur and her heart to start pounding in her chest. Physically shocked, she staggers backwards to grip the chain wire and keep herself upright. 

How many boys had been in the trailer that morning? Fangs, Sweet Pea, Joaquin and Jughead. Four boys. 

Just four boys. 

Four boys means a one in four chance that Jughead is dead. 

A one in four chance. 

"No." she moans, her hand coming up to grip her forehead. 

"Shit." JB hisses, and then she suddenly takes off running in the opposite direction. 

Sharna and Nova clearly know where she is headed because they immediately follow.

The entire way, Betty is a few paces behind and struggling to keep up. Her mind is screaming at her to run faster but she also just wants to cry and her legs are so wobbly she's not sure how she can even remain upright. 

The sun has dipped below the horizon and the street lights have just flickered on when they finally emerge between two rickety old single-wides and Betty spies a large congregation of Serpents in the distance near the opposite end of the trailer park. The girls slow their pace and Betty finally catches up with them.

As they approach the back of the pack, Serpents who spot them let out loud, shrill whistles. The whistles are then picked up by Serpents closer to the center of the huddle and carried all the way across the gathering like an unnerving game of Marco Polo. It's not long before there's whistling everywhere before the sound abruptly cuts out. 

"What's going on?" Betty manages to gasp, reaching out to grab hold of Nova's arm. 

"They're whistling to alert each other that non-Serpents are in the vicinity." Nova explains. "It's the quickest way for the gang to warn each other of approaching of hostiles and cops." 

"Well I'm not a hostile or a cop." Betty scowls. "I'm just..."

She trails off glibly, letting her mouth hang slightly ajar as her brain still struggles to process exactly what is happening. She can't finish her own sentence. She can't identify herself as Jughead's girlfriend. Not even to a "safe" Serpent like Nova. 

Trembling fear starts to settle into her bones then as Jellybean furiously launches herself past the others into the middle of the group. Acting on instinct alone, Betty uses her elbows to roughly push her way through the gathered crowd and follow her best friend.

She's so nervous she can hardly breathe. But she has to know.

She has to know. 

The first thing her panicked, watering eyes catch sight of is Sweet Pea. He is sitting on the doorstep of what Betty can only assume is the Topaz trailer. At least it seems to be the trailer at the epicenter of this chaotic scene.

He's so viscerally angry he looks like he's ready to go to war, except he's also holding a bag of ice to his head because a large gash is still freely pouring blood down the side of his face where it's gathering on the neckline of his shirt. 

The second thing Betty sees is a body on the ground. An actual, real, dead body. It's just lying there, out in the open, for anyone to see. 

It's been covered by a tattered old blanket, but the shape is definitely male. The arms are skewed at an odd angle, and the corpse is so creepily still. 

With Sweet Pea now confirmed as alive, it's become a one in _three_ chance that the body belongs to Jughead. Betty holds her hand over her mouth in a feeble attempt to prevent herself from physically being ill. She can feel the bile rising in her throat but she forcibly swallows it back down. 

She can see that the corpse is wearing a pair of black combat boots where the blanket hasn't stretched to provide enough coverage, and her mind reels as she tries to remember what shoes Jughead had been wearing when he left the house. 

_Oh please_ , she thinks. _Oh please, oh please, oh please. Oh please don't let it be him._  

"Jughead, what the actual hell is going on!" Jellybean suddenly screams. 

The shrill voice penetrates the damp early evening air and draws the attention of the entire gathering of snakes. But Jellybean only has eyes for her brother. 

Jughead is perched precariously on the bench seat of an old picnic table adjacent the trailer. He is clutching a bottle of whiskey so tightly his knuckles are tinged with white, and his head is uncomfortably thrown back to rest against the tabletop. Toni is crouched in front of him and frantically working on cleaning and stitching a nasty looking wound in his arm. Fangs stands above them both, a flashlight trained carefully on the injury to give Toni more light to work with. 

The second Betty sights him, she lets out a low and desperate cry of relief and drops to her knees on the dirt. She just wants to weep from utter happiness. But Nova and Sharna both immediately reach down with insistent hands and drag her back to her feet.

The rational part of Betty's brain reminds her that she's inside dangerous gang territory and she needs to keep her wits about her, but overwhelmingly she just feels completely and desperately thankful. 

Jughead lifts his head and his hard and troubled eyes are drawn in the direction of his family almost as soon as JB starts shouting. His gaze momentarily falls on Betty before dragging across to his sister. Toni removes a bloody tourniquet from the apex of Jughead's arm, which abruptly causes him to cry out in pain before the stoic mask drops across his face once more. He really only looks half conscious, yet he still somehow manages to communicate so much with just his stare alone. 

"Jellybean Jones." comes a booming voice from above them. "You are not welcome here." 

Tall Boy is standing at the trailer door behind Sweet Pea, a pistol in his right hand and a cigarette in his left. If his plan is to look intimidating, he is well and truly succeeding. Betty veritably shrinks at the sight of him, and she feels Sharna and Nova tighten their grips on her arms. If they're worried she may collapse again, they're probably not too far off the truth. 

Tall Boy looks every bit like the intimidating biker gang leader that he is, but somehow Jellybean is unmoved. 

"Pretty sure America is a free country. Pretty sure I'm standing on public property." she snarks sarcastically. "Pretty sure I have a right to know why my brother looks like he's about to keel over and fucking die."

"I'm fine. It's fine." Jughead says, though his voice is shockingly slurred. 

"It's not fine." Jellybean argues fervently. "Or am I only imagining the dead dude on the grass just over there?" 

"This is Serpents business, girl, and you are no Serpent." Tall Boy roars. "This is your final warning. Go home and take your little friend with you or you'll finally discover what your daddy spent years protecting you from."

"Bean go home." Jughead shouts, his hand coming up to hold his head as if the yelling has somehow caused him to be in further pain. "For Christ's sake. Go home. Now." 

The siblings exchange a meaningful look, and then Jellybean sighs and relents. She reaches over to take Betty's hand and squeezes it reassuringly. 

"If Jughead isn't home in two hours I'm coming back here." she threatens furiously, before turning away from Tall Boy and the scene before them. 

"We'll stay behind and keep an eye on Jug." Nova whispers.

"Thanks." Jellybean replies gratefully. "Text me when you know more?" 

Then Jellybean is forcing her way back through the crowd. Betty is staring nervously at Jughead one moment, and the next she finds herself being dragged along behind her best friend. The Serpents who had been so very unwelcoming when they first appeared on the scene now seem to part like the Red Sea to let the girls through. 

Betty is proud of the fact she doesn't actually begin sobbing until they're back within the safety of their own trailer. To her surprise, Jellybean also cries. 

For all that JB is more tactile than Betty, she isn't a person who is quick to become emotional. Betty still hasn't seen her cry over her father's passing, so it shocks her to see her crying over her brother now. It's a wake-up call and a stark reminder that nothing happening around them is okay or normal. 

They sit on the worn floral sofa, still clutching hands, and wait for news to reach them. It takes fifteen minutes for the first message from Nova to light up JB's phone.

"Jughead has been shot." JB announces, her face paling as she reads off the screen. "But he's going to be okay."  

Betty immediately remembers the gun Tall Boy was brandishing. "By the Serpent King?" she whispers in terror. 

Jellybean's phone vibrates in her hand and she pauses to read the new information before answering. 

"No." she says, her voice robotically calm now. "The boys were on a drug delivery and got jumped by a rival gang." 

There's another pause while she reads a third message from Nova. Then finally she looks up and meets Betty's eyes. 

"It's Joaquin who is dead." JB sighs. "He was a nice guy. I liked him." 

Betty is shocked at the ease with which Jellybean makes such a gruesome announcement. Like _oh one of Jughead’s closest friends has just been murdered, please pass the potatoes._ It only makes her worry further about Jughead’s health – both physical and emotional.

"Well what are we supposed to do?" Betty asks, her head falling into her hands. "Jughead needs to go to a hospital. Toni isn't exactly a qualified doctor." 

"No hospitals." Jellybean says, shaking her head as she taps out several messages on her phone in quick succession. "And this isn't the first gunshot wound Toni has stitched up. Don't worry, Betts." 

"Don't worry?" Betty explodes. "Jelly, a guy died tonight! And it could easily have been Jughead! We have to do something! We have to help him! We have to get him out of here!" 

"We fucking can't!" Jellybean shouts back. "Didn't you get the memo on the Serpent laws? There’s no escape for Jughead. He made his bed seven years ago when he joined the gang and now he'll just have to lie in it for the rest of his life." 

"You need to check your attitude." Betty snaps. "You're being a bad sister and a bad friend and you're pissing me off." 

Intellectually, Betty knows that she and Jellybean are only yelling at each other because they're practically drowning in stress. She's twenty years old and JB is eighteen and neither of them are equipped to cope with this level of intense anguish in such a short space of time.

The aggression is a coping mechanism that she recognizes well, because it's one both the Jones siblings regularly utilize. This is how they have learned to exist, growing up in the Serpent world. 

JB's phone starts singing Straight to Hell by the Clash (which Betty finds oddly fitting, given their current situation) and Andy's name appears on the screen next to several heart emojis. 

"I'm going to take this." Jellybean says coldly, before standing up and heading into her bedroom. 

Not knowing what else to do, Betty sits feebly on the couch and picks at her nail polish. She thinks about maybe texting Kevin or Veronica, but she doesn't quite know how to explain to them that she's upset because her gang banger boyfriend has just been shot. At least not without one of them freaking out and quite possibly phoning the cops. 

Jellybean eventually returns to the living room, abjectly avoiding eye contact. Then they sit in silence until Andy lets himself into the trailer. He rushes over to envelope his girlfriend in a tight embrace before reaching a hand over to Betty and patting her placatingly on the shoulder. 

"It'll be okay." he says quietly. 

Betty nods and attempts to muster a smile, but she's getting pretty sick of everybody telling her everything is alright when clearly it's not. They are so far from alright they're in a whole different zip code. Likely a different country. Quite possibly even a different interplanetary system. 

Andy makes the girls tea, and though Betty finds the taste acidic she forces herself to swallow the hot liquid and then focuses on her breathing. 

An hour later, there's an uneasy thumping of boots up the front steps, a key turning in the lock and then Sweet Pea awkwardly swings the front door open. There's a bandage on his head, and Betty can tell from the lack of blood on the gauze that his gash has been stitched closed. 

To Betty's relief, Jughead is there too, half masked by the darkness of the outside world. Sweet Pea has an arm wrapped firmly around Jughead's torso and a hand tucked up under his armpit to keep him upright and moving forward, but he's clearly straining under the weight of his best friend as he pushes his way into the room. 

As Sweet Pea walks, Jughead seemingly tries and mostly fails to move his feet in unison. His head is unstable on his neck and his eyes momentarily roll back as the pair awkwardly shuffle forward. 

Jughead temporarily lifts his head high enough to notice Betty hovering anxiously near the couch and his face lights up in an overly exuberant grin. 

"Hey there, beautiful." he slurs, before his face goes blank and he drops his head back down to rest against Sweet Pea's shoulder.

If it wasn't obvious to Sweet Pea before that something is going on between Betty and Jughead, it most certainly is now. But Betty can't worry about that just at the moment. She needs to focus on the boy she loves, who may or may not still be conscious. 

Andy rushes over to provide assistance and slings his arm around Jughead's other side, then together the boys half guide half drag Jughead down the short hallway into the bedroom and deposit him on the bed. 

Almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, Jughead is asleep and loudly snoring. Betty quickly follows them into the room and pulls the sheet right up to tuck under Jughead's chin. It makes him appear more peaceful and less ill.

"What's wrong with him?" Jellybean cries, appearing in the doorway. "Is he dying?"

"He's fine." Sweet Pea says assuredly, rolling his shoulders back and then popping his neck to alleviate some of the tension Jughead's weight has left behind. "The bullet only grazed his arm and Toni has cleaned the wound nicely." 

Betty climbs slowly onto the bed, resting her head against the side of Jughead's pillow, and reaching out to fold her hands on his chest. She can feel the steady thrum of his heartbeat through her palms and she is instantly awash with relief. 

"Then why is he acting like a zombie?" Jellybean demands, clearly still unconvinced. 

"He was in pain." Sweet Pea explains with a shrug, hands defensively gripping his own hips. "So Toni gave him a small dose of ketamine." 

All three others in the room gasp in horror and turn to look down at Jughead, where he's well and truly passed out on the bed. 

"You gave him a horse tranquilizer?" Jellybean shrieks. "Pea are you insane?"

"A _small_ dose." Sweet Pea stresses. "Calm your farm, JB. It'll take him maybe twelve hours to sleep it off." 

Then he turns to look directly at Betty. "You need to monitor him tonight. Watch for fevers and chills. Oh and make sure the wound doesn't start to smell bad or get festy." 

"Wh-what do we do if any of those things happen?" Betty stammers, suddenly nervous under the intensity of Sweet Pea's gaze. 

This is one of the first times he's ever spoken to her without aggression or condescension in his voice. She's not sure if she's actually glad to be finally acknowledged, or if it just makes her more fearful. 

"If he gets sick just call me or Toni." Sweet Pea says resolutely. "I'll come by in the morning and check on him." 

Once Sweet Pea has gone from the trailer, they leave Jughead asleep in the bedroom and head back out into the living room to figure out their next move. 

It's decided that they will divide the night into shifts. Jellybean will watch over Jughead until midnight, then try to get a few hours sleep before heading off to work the early morning shift at Pops. Andy will sit with Jughead until 4.30, then drive Jellybean to work. So that leaves Betty to take the final shift from 4.30am until whatever time Jughead awakes and is (hopefully) feeling better.  

Andy disappears to Jellybean's bedroom for some shut-eye before midnight, while Betty prepares both herself and Jellybean a very basic dinner of reheated chicken casserole leftovers.

After dropping a plate off in Jughead's room for Jellybean, Betty lies down on the couch in the living room to wait for something. Anything. Whatever is coming next.  

The next time she opens her eyes, it's to the sensation of someone gently shaking her shoulder. The whole trailer is pitch black, save for the lamp light emanating from underneath the bedroom door, and Betty squints while her sight adjusts to the darkness. 

"Hey Betty, sorry to wake you." it's Andy's whispered voice. "Jellybean and I are leaving now. It's time for your shift." 

Betty gasps and sits up straight on the couch, shocked to realize she's actually been solidly asleep for several hours. She'd known she was exhausted, but really hadn't expected slumber to come so easily. 

Jellybean is hovering by the front door, dressed in her Pops uniform, and Andy has his car keys in his hand. 

"Okay, sure." Betty says, her voice croaky from lack of use. "How is the patient?"

"So far, so good." Jellybean replies. "I'll be back in the afternoon. I'll bring you home some late lunch."

There's still a slight edge to her best friend's voice and Betty recognizes that their small argument from the previous evening probably hasn't resolved itself just yet. After somewhat terse goodbyes, Betty stands and stretches her aching limbs (because the couch isn't the world's most comfortable place to sleep) then pads quietly down the hall and opens the door to Jughead's room. 

He's still in almost the exact same position as when she'd seen him last, though the bed sheet is now pooled around his waist. There's a little drool gathering at the corner of his pale mouth, and purple shadows hang under his eyes. But other than that, he looks normal and his skin is neither warm nor clammy to touch. 

Betty sits on the bed next to him and reaches out to carefully stroke his hair. Jughead seems to react a little to that by leaning toward her touch. She smiles, despite the trauma of the situation, and settles down to wait out the rest of the pre-dawn period.

Just after 10am, Jughead coughs and then opens his eyes. He glances slowly around the room, as if gaining his bearings, then he looks up at Betty where she’s still perched beside him. He slowly reaches over and takes her hand, giving it a light squeeze.

“Hey babe.” he says so quietly it’s almost inaudible.

“Hi!” Betty chirps happily, very conscious of the fact she’s overcompensating but basically unable to stop herself. “Here, have a sip of water.”

She grabs the cup off the night stand and holds it to his cracked and dry lips. He smiles gratefully and lifts his head a little so that he can drink a few mouthfuls.

“How are you feeling? Can I get you anything? Some breakfast? Painkillers? Clean clothes? I can run to Pops and get you a milkshake!”

Jughead smiles again and kisses the back of her hand.

“Thank you for taking care of me.” is all he replies.

“We all did.” she says. “Jelly and Andy and I. They’ll be back later.”

Jughead attempts to sit up but winces in pain as he jolts his arm. Betty reaches over to help steady him.

“Oh God, Jug.” she gasps. “Is it really bad?”

“No, it’s okay.” he promises with a sigh. “It hurts a bit, but I got lucky. A lot luckier than Joaquin.”

Betty lays her head against his shoulder and tries to hug him as best she can from the side, without causing him any further discomfort.

“I’m so sorry about Joaquin.” she whispers sadly. “When I first saw him under that blanket last night, I thought it was you and…”

She trails off, unable to even finish her own awful sentence as she furiously blinks tears away.

“I know, Betts.” Jughead murmurs, leaning down to place a kiss on the crown of her head. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I’m sorry you had to see any of it at all.”

“Will you tell me what happened?” she ventures quietly. “How he died?”

Betty expects an immediate rebuke, or maybe even for Jughead to physically pull away from her. She knows he doesn’t want her involved in any of the Serpents business. He’s made that very clear on many occasions.

But perhaps his friend’s death so soon after his father’s demise has mellowed him somewhat. Or maybe there’s just a touch of the ketamine still in his system. Because he sighs again, and then he tells her.

“It was supposed to be an easy job.” he begins. “We delivered a shipment of high-grade opioids to a drop point about ten miles west of Midvale and collected a large payment in cash.”

“When you say large, how big do you really mean?” Betty interrupts to ask.

“I’m not exactly sure but it was easily half a million dollars.” he answers lowly. “It was separated into five bags so we could carry it back to the southside on our bikes. We got maybe half way home before we were ambushed.”

“Ambushed?” Betty interrupts again, and this time she earns a look of reproach that causes her to clamp her lips tightly shut.

“Yeah. But it was a gang we’d never seen before.” Jughead explains. “They were in trucks, and there must have been a dozen in their group. They came for Sweet Pea first and knocked him clean off his bike. Our first mistake was that we all stopped to try and help him when we should have just kept riding for home.”

"You didn’t abandon your best friend, Jug.” Betty disagrees ardently. “That’s a _good_ thing not a bad thing.”

“No, it was stupid.” Jughead moans. “We made ourselves into targets the moment we parked our bikes. They had assault rifles and they just opened fire on us. I got shot trying to help Pea. Then they turned their attention on Fangs and Toni, and Joaquin tried to distract them but ended up with a bullet right between his eyes.”

“Holy shit.” Betty breathes.

“I swear Betts, I thought we were all going to die.” Jughead says despondently. “I don’t know why they didn’t kill us. Instead they just snatched the bags of money and took off down the interstate.”

Momentarily forgetting about Jughead’s shoulder, Betty launches herself fully into his arms and embraces him tightly. She can’t believe how close she came to actually losing him.

She can’t fathom what it was like to actually watch a close friend get murdered in cold blood, nor how they possibly managed to lug his body back to Riverdale on their motorcycles.

Jughead hugs Betty back with a similar ferocity and then shifts so that he can bring his lips down over hers. The kiss is neither deep nor passionate, but it’s a strong reminder of their connection to one another and their symbiotic relationship.

After that, Betty helps Jughead to change the dressings on his wound (which is miraculously healing nicely) and then prepares him a breakfast of toast and eggs while he freshens up in the shower.

It’s nearing the middle of the day when Sweet Pea knocks on the front door. By this stage, Jughead is fully up and about, so he goes to let him inside.

Sweet Pea greets him with a light clap on the back. “How you feelin’?”

“Like I got shot.” Jughead grins mirthlessly. “You?”

“Like I got knocked off my bike.” Sweet Pea says and they both awkwardly chuckle.

Betty comes around the corner from the kitchen with a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. She’s happy to see Jughead laughing, but she can see the haunted look in both their eyes and suspects its more than just Joaquin’s death that is weighing heavily on their minds.

“Good morning Blondie.” Sweet Pea greets her, though his words are teasing they no longer hold malice. “Did you get much sleep last night?”

“Some.” Betty answers docilely.

“Hey listen, you’re doing a good job. Just hang in there.” Sweet Pea says.

She honestly can’t tell if he’s mocking her or being genuine, so her eyes pan over to Jughead. He provides her with a hint of a smirk, but his expression remains worried, so really he’s no help to her at all.

Betty fleetingly wonders if Toni dosed Sweet Pea up with horse tranquilizer too. Maybe they’re all just doped right up to their eyeballs.

“Pea and I are going out for a while, okay?” Jughead announces. “It’s nothing for you to be worried about. We just need to go talk to a few people. I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“But Juggie, your arm!” Betty gasps, wanting to reach out and grab him but instead gripping onto her mug as tightly as she can manage.

“My arm is great, don’t worry.” he replies smoothly, even though she can tell he’s lying.

“If any Serpents come to the door, just tell them Jughead is sleeping and don’t let them inside.” Sweet Pea adds helpfully.

Jughead moves past her into the bedroom to fetch his Serpents leather, and on the way back down the hall he plants a quick kiss on her cheek as they head for the door. It feels so foreign for him to be doing something intimate in front of Sweet Pea that Betty actually flinches away.

Suddenly finding herself alone in the trailer, Betty feels skittish and like her mind is slowly starting to unravel. She finishes her coffee, turns on the television and fills in the silence by watching really old episodes of Love it or List it (she always thinks the families on this show are crazy to sell their beautifully renovated homes).

At 2pm, Jellybean arrives home. She’s dead on her feet from a long night followed by a long shift at work, so she flops down on the couch and doesn’t offer much in the way of conversation (nor does she provide the lunch she’d earlier promised).

Betty starts to feel more than a little claustrophobic, so she lets JB know not to answer the door to any Serpents then pulls on her shoes and goes for a walk.

It’s 75 degrees outside, which is infinitely more pleasant than the heat wave they’d experienced the previous day. She wanders up and down South Avenue for a couple of hours, browsing in stores but not making any purchases before stopping by the grocery store to grab supplies.

When Betty gets home, her arms laden down with bags, she’s surprised to find JB’s truck parked directly out front with all the doors open.

Just as she ambles up the front stairs, Jellybean and Andy come bursting unexpectedly out of the trailer and nearly send her flying. They're both hefting large suitcases, which they deposit in the bed of the pick-up. 

"What's going on?" Betty frowns. "I'm cooking steak for dinner." 

"We need to leave." Jellybean says in a rush. "Pack your stuff. I'm leaving within the hour so if you hurry up I can give you a ride."

Andy comes around to the other side of the truck and kisses Jellybean chastely on the lips. He’s brandishing his car keys and Betty can tell right away that he’s making a quick exit.

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay? Text me if you need me." he tells JB, then waves up at Betty. "Bye, Betts. I'll see you soon."

Once Andy climbs into his sedan and drives away, Betty lets her grocery bags fall onto the dusty wooden floor of the porch and watches in shock as Jellybean fusses around checking the oil in the truck.

"JB why are you leaving?" she asks anxiously. "I'm not leaving."

"We're both leaving." Jellybean says firmly. "The situation in Riverdale is currently untenable and we have to go as quickly as possible. I'm heading to Philly to live with Andy for a while and you're going back to California."

"No I'm not." Betty replies resolutely. "I'm staying here. Jughead needs me." 

"Yeah? Well you'd better take that up with him directly because he's the one who just gave us our marching orders." Jellybean snaps.  

Taking the advice to heart, Betty scowls and then stomps inside the trailer. She locates Jughead in their bedroom but is surprised to find he's tossing all her things into a haphazard pile in the middle of the unmade bed. 

"Juggie?" she asks meekly, the fight suddenly leaving her body. "What are you doing with all my stuff?" 

His hands stop their frantic movements, still clutching one of her lipsticks, as he looks up at her. His face is ashen, but he also looks determined to finish whatever it is that he's started. 

"Hey." he greets her quietly. "Can you come in here? I need to talk to you." 

Betty is suddenly torn between an overwhelming desire to either rush into the room to embrace him or run far away so she can't hear whatever it is that he's about to say. In the end she compromises by slinking slowly into the room and taking a precarious seat on the edge of the desk. 

“Jughead please tell me what this is about.” she manages to whisper.

He pauses for a moment then comes to stand between her legs, reaching out to gingerly touch her shoulders.

“Sweet Pea and I,” he begins uneasily. “We went looking for that gang this morning. The jerks who stole our money.”

“What!” Betty shrieks. “Jughead you said they had guns. Why would you do that?”

Jughead is visibly trying to remain calm as he finds the words to answer her.

“Because we’re in trouble with the Serpents, Betts.” he explains. “We fucked up and nobody wants to be half a million dollars in debt to the King. The only way to keep our necks safe was to retrieve the stolen cash.”

“But you were attacked!” Betty argues fervently. “Joaquin died! Surely Tall Boy can’t be blaming you for this?”

“Of course he is.” Jughead says, a little harshly. “We should have protected the cash at all costs. When we found their hideout we thought we could fix everything, but the money was already gone.”

“Jughead.” she gasps. “Did you and Sweet Pea… _kill_ those guys?”

“No.” Jughead replies, sounding almost relieved. “I didn’t.”

Betty picks up straight away on Jughead’s use of _I_ instead of _we_ and suspects that means those gang bangers are probably dead at Sweet Pea’s hands. She feels sick at the thought but knows she doesn’t have the time to process it just yet.

“But it doesn’t change the fact that we’re in big trouble here now.” Jughead continues. “Tall Boy and his enforcers will be coming for us soon. To punish us. And you can’t be there when it happens.”

That sinking feeling returns to the pit of Betty’s stomach. She understands, now, where this conversation is leading.

“No.” she says preemptively. “I’m not leaving you alone here.”

“Do you remember our date back in June? When we visited that lake in Midvale?” he asks lowly. “You promised me if I asked you to go, that you would.”

“No, Juggie.” she says again, shaking her head determinedly. “That was months ago. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

"Betty this isn’t some game.” he replies, anger starting to increase the tempo of his voice. “I don’t know what they might do to you. So you need to leave town and you need to leave now. Betty you _promised_.” 

“Yes I promised.” she replies heatedly. “But that was before.”

 "Before what?” Jughead asks, running a hand through his raven black hair to quell his frustration. “Before my dad died?”

“No, Jug.” Betty says, reaching out to ensnare his wrist with both her hands. “Before I fell in love with you.”

_Good,_ she thinks. _It’s finally out there._

Jughead seems to completely freeze, at least momentarily. Not even his eyes are blinking as he stares at her in total abject silence.

Betty figures that he’s probably just taking a moment to process what she’s said. It’s not like this is the most opportune moment for them to declare their true and deepest feelings for one another, but if it stops him from pushing her away then it’ll be worth it in the long run.

Finally, after an incredibly lengthy and increasingly awkward pause, Jughead bursts out laughing. It’s not _quite_ the reaction Betty has been expecting to her much-awaited declaration. When he notices she isn’t laughing along with him, he sobers immediately.

“Uh, you’re joking right?” he asks, suddenly frowning.

“Joking?” Betty scowls. “No, Jughead. Why would I joke about loving you?”

His eyes narrow as he considers her words carefully, then they become almost comically wide with shock as he quickly snatches his wrist away so that they’re no longer touching.

He’s looking at her like she’s betrayed him. Like she’s just completely shattered his trust.

“ _Fuck_.” he hisses.

He laughs again, but this time it’s a hollow and incredulous sort of chuckle. Betty swallows heavily over a lump that’s forming in her throat. She’s clearly spooked him.

“Jughead.” Betty sighs. “It’s okay if you can’t say it back right away. I understand if you – ”

“Say it back?” he gasps, his voice rising once more with anger as he interjects. “Betty have you lost your damn mind? This is exactly what Sweet Pea warned me about when he told me not to date girls outside the gang.”

“Warned you about what?” she shivers.

“Holy shit Betty. I thought I made it clear right from the outset.” Jughead rants. “I _told_ you that this was dangerous. I _told_ you that this could never become anything real. I _told_ you that you’d have to leave sooner rather than later. And you agreed. You _agreed!_ ”

Betty hears what he’s saying but she doesn’t believe he’s speaking his own truth. This isn’t her Jughead talking. Not really. He’s allowing fear to distort him.

“Juggie…” she whispers, reaching for him again, but he deliberately steps out of her reach. “I know what you’re doing. I know you’re saying this to push me away. Because you think you can only protect me if I’m gone.”

“Why are women so fucking crazy?” he practically sneers. “How have you managed to turn a harmless summer fling into some kind of epic romance that only exists inside your own mind?”

At his words, Betty is suddenly reeling. She appraises him carefully and decides that the shock, anger and disappointment plastered across his face and the tension in his body language all seem awfully real.

There’s a part of her still sure that he’s faking it and that he’s just trying to keep her safe by pushing her away. But now there’s also a voice invading her inner thoughts, reminding her that he _did_ say all those things to her upfront.

She can vividly remember the first time they kissed. They’d been entangled between the sheets in his bed after she not so clandestinely snuck into this very room. And the words he’d spoken on that night now echo in the recesses of her mind.

_This can never be anything more than what it is now. You understand?_

_I’m not kidding around. This isn’t some cliché movie where we fall in love._

The realization strikes her like a knife to the heart. Suddenly the possibility exists that she truly has overhyped the whole thing and they were never romantically on the same page.

He never wanted her to stay.

“Are you trying to say you don’t love me, Jug?” she asks, suddenly desperate in her need to know the answer.

“Of course I don’t!” he rages. “I really _care_ about you, Betty. But I don’t love you. I don’t even know what to say to all this lunacy. I feel like I’ve been blindsided.”  

Betty sucks in a sharp intake of breath that immediately burns her lungs.

So there it is.

The truth finally revealed.

Jughead doesn’t love her.

She can’t even believe this is happening.

Jughead has somehow stuck to the pre-agreed conditions of their relationship the entire three months they’ve been together without her even realizing.

Betty has been living inside a fantasy.

And she’s so incredibly stupid.

The mortified look on her face must be truly alarming because Jughead appears to immediately deflate like a balloon.

“I’m so sorry, Betts.” he murmurs, scrubbing the palm of his hand across his face. “I didn’t want to hurt you like this. I wasn’t lying when I said I care about you.”

Suddenly Betty feels an intense desire to get the hell out of the trailer. Jughead’s anger is one thing, but she can’t deal with his sympathy. She doesn’t need him feeling sorry for her just because she chose to open up her heart and allow herself to love someone who expressly asked not to be loved.

“It’s fine.” she says sharply. “It doesn’t matter.”

Without another word she pushes herself off the desk and moves over to the bed, now unexpectedly grateful that Jughead has already thrown all of her stuff onto the mattress. It makes it very easy to grab her bags and just start frantically shoving her possessions inside.

“Please Betty, can we talk about this?”

She can sense him hovering behind her and hear the turmoil in his voice, but she avoids eye contact and continues to work at her task. Once the last of her things is packed, she loudly and aggressively zips the bags closed then slings them over her shoulders.

“No.” she says coldly. “I don’t want to talk to you. This is over. _We’re_ over.”

She doesn’t bother to check if she’s left anything behind. She just needs to leave.

She storms out of the bedroom, down the hall and onto the front porch. She almost stumbles over the groceries she’d discarded there earlier, but artfully dodges them at the last moment. They don’t matter anymore. There won’t be any steak dinners.

Jellybean is sitting in the truck but hasn’t yet started the motor. She looks up abruptly as Betty comes hurtling down the front steps with Jughead hot on her heels.

Betty throws the bags indiscriminately into the back then with intense desperation she climbs into the passenger seat, buckles up her seatbelt and makes a show of locking the door.

“Christ.” she hears Jughead mutter despondently. “At least secure the load.”

She keeps her eyes straight ahead, staring out over the dankness of Sunnyside. But she hears Jughead thumping around in the bed of the truck and moving luggage around.

Then he appears at Jellybean’s rolled down window and reaches in to squeeze his sister into a tight embrace.

Betty can feel burning tears start to pool in the corners of her eyes but she doesn’t bat them away (even though she badly wants to) because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

“You’ll be okay?” Jellybean asks him. “I want you to take care of yourself. And you’ll call me? Promise me you’ll call me.”

“I will, Bean.” he says with a tight smile.

The smile slips from Jughead’s lips when he lifts his eyes to look over at Betty.

“I’ll call you too, okay Betts?” he adds quietly. “To check in and see how you’re doing.”

“Don’t bother.” Betty snaps, purposefully not meeting his gaze. “I don’t want to speak to you ever again.”

Jellybean audibly gasps and there’s a few seconds of edgy silence before Jughead sighs, nods and then taps the roof of the truck to signal that Jellybean can drive away.

As the vehicle pulls out of the trailer park and reaches the road, it occurs to Betty that if Tall Boy punishes Jughead severely for losing the drug money she may actually never see him again.

Just at the thought of it, Betty bursts into tears. But she uses ever ounce of willpower in her anxiety riddled body not to turn around and look at him through the back window.

She’s a fool for loving him. She’s a fool for thinking he loved her back. Now he just thinks she’s some silly young girl and it makes her wish the ground could open up and swallow her whole.

“What the hell happened back there?” Jellybean asks incredulously once they’re well on their way towards the highway.

“He’s not the man I thought he was.” Betty sniffles. “I told him I loved him and he laughed at me. I thought what we had was special, but it turns out I’m just delusional.”

Betty is only half surprised when Jellybean scoffs at her. They’re still on shaky ground following their minor disagreement the previous evening, so it’s not unexpected that she is choosing to side with her brother.

“Are you seriously going to be this person?” JB groans. “Jughead is in way over his head with this Serpents crap and instead you’re just making this all about you? You can be such a little idiot sometimes Betty.”

“Can we just not talk about this right now?” Betty screeches back.

“With pleasure.” Jellybean fumes.

As the truck passes by the Riverdale city limits, the belligerent silence penetrates all the way to the core of Betty’s shattered heart.

Things are not okay.

Things are _very_ not okay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me on tumblr (sadie-quinn) and say hi! 
> 
> I have an arbitrary goal to have this fic wrapped up before my daughter's second birthday (August 6 - hence my super original pseud!) but these chapters are super long and I work very long hours in my job so I'm not sure if I'm being overly ambitious. We shall see!


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